JAPAN: Tokyo Among Top 4 Cities in the World

Tokyo at night. (photo / Joshua Williams)

October 22, 11:29 PM

By Joshua Williams

New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo are the top four cities in the world according to the newly released Global Power City Index, a ranking of 35 of the world’s top cities by the Institute for Urban Strategies at The Mori Memorial Foundation in Tokyo.

According to the institute, “as half of the people of the world are living in cities, it is necessary to create attractive urban space to pull the people, goods, and money, those who are moving borderless, and to pursue the enjoyable and livable environment.” The index, which is the first of its kind out of Japan, aims to judge the comprehensive power of a city.

The ranking is based on six overall objective factors:

• "Economy,"
• "Research & Development,"
• "Cultural Interaction,"
• "Livability,"
• "Ecology & Natural Environment,"
• and "Accessibility,"

with 69 individual indicators among them.

The institute also expanded its study by looking at the cities from the subjective perspective of five different ‘actors’ (or types of people who influence cities):

• global “Managers,"
• "Researchers,"
• "Artists,"
• "Visitors,"
• and local "Residents."

While the institute’s research is aimed largely at finding ways to improve Tokyo’s future, it strived to maintain a fairness in city rankings. The Global Power City Index, which is in its second year of ranking cities, was released on October 22 (JST).

The Top 10 cities in the world for 2009 according to the Global Power City Index are:

1. New York
2. London
3. Paris
4. Tokyo
5. Singapore
6. Berlin
7. Vienna
8. Amsterdam
9. Zurich
10. Hong Kong

The other cities are ranked as follows: Madrid (11), Seoul (12), Los Angeles (13), Sydney (14), Toronto (15), Frankfurt (16), Copenhagen (17), Brussels (18), Geneva (19), Boston (20), Shanghai (21), Chicago (22), Vancouver (23), San Francisco (24), Osaka (25), Beijing (26), Kuala Lumpur (27), Milan (28), Bangkok (29), Fukuoka (30), Taipei (31), Moscow (32), Sao Paulo (33), Mumbai (34), and Cairo (35).

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