Each city is unique in its structure, outlook, and history. But in many cases, cities evolve along similar development pathways, sharing characteristics, challenges, and opportunities with other cities around the world.
To help classify these cities and their shared traits, we have created a typology of city archetypes to allow decisionmakers to compare and monitor the performance of similar cities. The archetypes have been defined using a range of metrics from all five categories of the Global Cities Index, with each archetype focusing on a different set of common traits.
Classifying the world’s major cities in this way reveals some key trends for each group, pinpointing similarities, and—equally important—differences between types of cities.
The true “global cities” that drive the world economy. They are the largest cities in the world by GDP, and are financial and business hubs with many corporate headquarters and universities.
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Important and large cities in their regions, but not as economically powerful on the global stage as the Global Leaders. They outperform their respective countries on metrics such as economic growth and income per person, and tend to have more universities and business activity than neighbouring cities.
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Mostly smaller cities that have high quality of life. They have many cultural sites and a sizeable share of foreign-born residents. They tend to attract residents and tourists alike due to their amenities and educational opportunities.
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Cities that have prioritized sustainable growth and are focused on adapting to and mitigating the effects of climate change. They have low emissions intensities and are focused on the clean energy transition, with the political stability to support their climate goals.
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Cities dependent on extraction or manufacturing to drive growth. They tend to have low economic diversity and experience volatile growth due to the nature of their key industries. These cities often have high emissions intensities.
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Cities facing a demographic challenge from ageing (and falling) populations. As a result, GDP growth is slowing or stagnant and they often struggle to attract immigrants, leading to a low share of foreign-born residents.
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Very large urban areas (over 10 million residents) in the developing world. Their infrastructure investments have often struggled to keep up with the increasing population and they have low levels of income per person.
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Cities in the developing world that are outperforming their respective countries. They attract residents due to their fast productivity growth and higher levels of income per person than their country as a whole.
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In both the Economics and Human Capital categories, the Global Leaders unsurprisingly emerge as the strongest performers, reflecting their economic prowess and their abundance of well-educated, productive workers.
Although Global Leaders excel in Quality of Life, they are outperformed by the smaller Cultural Capitals, which, while not as economically dominant, offer a higher quality of life for residents.
Sustainable Cities achieve the highest scores in both the Environment and Governance categories, underscoring their commitment to environmental priorities and the robustness of their institutions.
