Urban Competitiveness Report

A recently released Global Urban Competitiveness Report 2007, which ranks 500 cities across the world on seven parameters of competitiveness, has ranked New York as the most competitive city in the world, followed by London, Tokyo, Paris and Washington DC. The report has been released since 2006 by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences after analyzing major cities' industries, people, multinational cooperation, as well as living, social and business environments.



Urban competitiveness is defined as a city’s ability of creating more wealth in a faster and better manner than other cities in the world. The report measures the comprehensive competitiveness of 500 cities around the world in terms of 9 indexes, namely GDP, per capita GDP, per unit area GDP, labor productivity, number of multi-national enterprises settled in the city, number of patent applications, price advantage, economic growth rate and employment rate.

The report finds that good performers in the world are making the following efforts in order to compete with their global rivals:
1. Outlining development strategies and providing guidance in planning;
2. Improving business environment to support small and medium-sized enterprises;
3. Promoting industrial upgrade’; achieving the transformation of the city;
4. Offering life-long education to citizens and encouraging the inflow of talents;
5. Paying attention to environment protection and pursuing sustainable development;
6. Designing city brand and marketing the city;
7. Building service-oriented government by implementing enterprise management model in city management;
8. Fostering city’s special characteristics and cultivating diversified cultures.

The report urges that with a growing urbanization, government should attach greater importance to the sustainable development of economy, society, environment and culture, promote urban competitiveness and build their cities into the nicest home for people. To achieve that goal, government officials have to deal with the following 10 issues:

1. Giving local government larger autonomy, and properly handling the relationship between central and local governments;
2. Creating a better environment for businesses, and engaging market forces into government policy making;
3. Maintaining local features while expanding communications with the world; providing life-long education to the public to facilitate industrial upgrade; promoting innovation and entrepreneurship;
4. Balanced development of economic and social development; promoting integration of city and region;
5. Developing multiple industries;
6. Preserving and inheriting historical culture;
7. Balanced development of business environment and residential environment.