The World's Best Cities List Is Out. Here's How They Actually Pick Winners

How do you determine what makes a great city? This week on Unpacked, Afar editor at large Laura Dannen Redman sits down with Chris Fair, president and CEO of Resonance Consultancy, to unpack the firm’s annual World's Best Cities ranking.

Chris explains how the list measures livability, lovability, and prosperity; the UK city that still tops the chart; the methodology changes that reshaped the top 100; and what the ranking means for overtourism, climate risk, and destination marketing.

In this episode you’ll learn

• How Resonance measures a city’s livability, lovability, and prosperity

• The two cities that remain neck and neck at the top of the list

• Which cities climbed or slipped after switching data sources from TripAdvisor to Google Maps

• The perception gap between measured performance and global awareness, with Sao Paulo as a case study

• How climate risk and resilience are starting to factor into city rankings

Don’t miss these moments

• [00:03:00] How the ranking began as a consulting tool and evolved into a public benchmark

• [00:08:00] The top 10 cities, revealed

• [00:10:00] Why switching from TripAdvisor to Google Maps changed the makeup of the top 100

• [00:11:00] Sao Paulo’s rise in lovability and the perception gap in Ipsos survey results

• [00:16:00] The emerging role of climate risk and resilience in city rankings

• [00:20:00] The challenge of destination concentration and how only a handful of places capture most traveler interest

• [00:23:00] Vancouver’s spot at 41 and what it reveals about livability versus prosperity

Meet this episode’s guests

• Laura Dannen Redman, Afar editor at large
• Chris Fair, president and CEO, Resonance Consultancy

Resources

• Read the full World's Best Cities report at WorldsBestCities.comExplore Afar’s coverage of the World's Best Cities List
• Read about the WrldCity Forum, hosted by Resonance
• If you’re interested in small city rankings or regional lists, check Resonance’s Americas and Europe city reports

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• Explore our other podcasts, View From Afar, about the people and companies shaping the future of travel, and ⁠Travel Tales⁠⁠⁠, which celebrates first-person narratives about the way travel changes us.

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