Dubai ranks fifth in one of the most comprehensive lists of the world’s best cities. Resonance Consultancy’s latest report of the World’s Best Cities 2021 ranks Dubai one notch higher from its sixth spot last year. Dubai ranked #9 the year before that, demonstrating the rapid progress that the city has made towards its stated ambition of becoming the world’s best city to live and work in.

London topped the rankings this year, followed by Paris, New York and Moscow. Vancouver-based Resonance Consultancy is a leading placemaking, branding and marketing organisation. It annually ranks the world’s 100 best cities.

Dubai is a city of superlatives. The city reinvented itself yet again throughout the 2010s, growing…to an international tourism and business destination

“Dubai is a city of superlatives: you can ride the elevator to the top of the world’s tallest building for a bird’s-eye view, bet on the ponies at the world’s richest horse race and pose for photos in front of the world’s tallest choreographed fountains,” said the report accompanying the rankings. “These experiences are not by accident: the city reinvented itself yet again throughout the 2010s, growing…to an international tourism and business destination,” it said.

Dubai: The sum of Place and its People

The latest rankings are based on six pillars: Place, Product, Programming, People, Prosperity and Promotion. Dubai, which ranked #5 overall, tops the world on Place and People parameters. The consultancy defines Place as “The perceived quality of a city’s natural and built environment, including the sub-categories of weather, safety, neighbourhoods & landmarks, and outdoors.”

It defines People as “the immigration rate and diversity of a city, including the sub-categories of foreign-born and educational attainment.” It’ll be safe to say that Dubai boasts the world’s most diverse demographic mix, a fact that wasn’t lost on the authors of the report. Dubai has attracted “the highest proportion of the foreign-born population of any city worldwide, and they’re a sharp crowd, ranking #23 for Educational Attainment globally,” noted the report.

Dubai ranks fairly high (#4) on the Promotion parameter, too. Resonance defines Promotion as “the quantity of stories, references and recommendations shared online about a city, including the sub-categories of Google Search Results, Google Trends, Facebook Check-ins, Instagram Hashtags, and TripAdvisor Reviews.”

For its report, Resonance tracks cities with populations of more than a million, using a combination of statistical performance and qualitative evaluations by locals and visitors in 24 areas grouped into six core categories.

Cities of the future

“Cities are our collective future, and our goal is to make Best Cities the world’s most credible source of city performance. We feel cities, their residents, investors and visitors need objective rankings, not just surveys – a holistic approach that shows which factors make cities attractive as places to live, work and play,” Resonance Consultancy noted.

As our cities and borders gradually reopen, it is clear that cities have been changed by the pandemic — in some ways for the better and in others for the worse… Cities face imminent and myriad challenges that will define their next decade and beyond. To say a reinvention is upon us is an understatement.

Chris Fair, President and CEO of Resonance Consultancy

“As our cities and borders gradually reopen, it is clear that cities have been changed by the pandemic—in some ways for the better and in others for the worse,” said Chris Fair, President and CEO of Resonance Consultancy.

“Cities face imminent and myriad challenges that will define their next decade and beyond. To say a reinvention is upon us is an understatement,” he noted.

Weeks before the start of Expo 2020, dubbed the ‘greatest show on earth’, Time magazine ranked Dubai among the world’s 100 greatest places to visit this year. Dubai, a global centre of tourism, trade and business, is the world’s fourth most visited destination (pre-pandemic data). It boasts of the world’s busiest international airport for international passengers, and its flagship carrier Emirates flies about 60 million passengers a year, with a bulk of those passengers transiting through its Dubai hub.

Post-pandemic pioneer

The report acknowledged Dubai’s lead in post-pandemic recovery. “An alluring blend of over-the-top experiences, Arab heritage and luxury shopping, Dubai is so over the pandemic,” it noted. It added that the city “is hoping to bring back the tourists (16.7 million in 2019) who have become critical to its economy, and has spent its downtime building and recalibrating in a velocity unprecedented even for this Energizer Bunny of a metropolis.”

An alluring blend of over-the-top experiences, Arab heritage and luxury shopping, Dubai is so over the pandemic,” it noted

“This is a ranking of the “hardware” of a city—often the most difficult metric for cities to get right. We studied a city’s key institutions, attractions and infrastructure. A city’s infrastructure and institutions shape its identity via quantity, quality and reputation…. The more diverse a city’s population, the more it produces global ideas… on a local scale. Human capital is often a city’s most valuable resource. A well-paid, economically secure citizenry facilitates stewardship and innovation. Cities are the engines of the global economy and the badges of human ingenuity. New cities are catching the imagination of global talent, with urban wealth and vibrancy created in more places than ever before,” the report noted.

“The economic development and influx of new residents have allowed Dubai to rank as the planet’s safest city is truly astonishing,” it added.

Among the 10 top cities ranked, Tokyo, Singapore, Los Angeles, Barcelona and Madrid follow Dubai. Doha ranks 12th, Chicago 13th, Abu Dhabi 14th and San Francisco 15th. Among other Middle Eastern cities in the list, Riyadh ranks #55, Tel Aviv #58, Kuwait #68 and Muscat #80.