From 1750 to 2050, the world will completely "enter the city".
Affected by the decline in the average competitiveness of cities in China, the United States and Europe, the average competitiveness of global cities declined slightly during the reporting period this year.
At the same time, the world needs to attach great importance to the severe challenges and solutions of municipal financing. According to Addis Ababa Action Agenda (UN 2015B), improving municipal finance is a global priority.
On the afternoon of November 12th, the fourth research report, Global Urban Competitiveness Report 2019-2020: The World Entering Cities in 300 Years, was officially released in Ningbo.
By convention, this report ranks the economic competitiveness and sustainable competitiveness of 1006 cities around the world.
Among them, 20 cities in China are among the top 100 in economic competitiveness, and Shenzhen leads with the fourth place in the world. Among the top 100 sustainable competitiveness, only nine China cities are on the list, and it is worth mentioning that Shenzhen ranks among the top 20 for the first time.
Shenzhen Image Source: Photo Network
In addition, this report also puts forward a new global city classification standard, adopts hierarchical clustering method to cluster and analyze the centrality index of 1006 sample cities, and divides the sample cities into three layers, including 2 categories, 5 groups and 10 levels.
The first class is a global city (a); The second is an international hub city (b); The third is an international gateway city (c); The fourth is the regional hub city (D); The fifth is the regional gateway city (E).
The results show that there are three A+ cities as global cities, namely new york, London and Tokyo. There are two A grades, Beijing and Paris, which "show that the global urban system is undergoing important changes and China has become an important pole in the world".
Economic competitiveness
Cities in northern China have fallen more.
What is global urban competitiveness?
According to the report, it refers to a city’s ability to attract, compete, own and control factors and markets, create more, faster, more efficient and more sustainable value and provide welfare for its residents in the process of global cooperation and competition.
The report shows that due to the decline in the average competitiveness of cities in China, the United States and Europe, the average competitiveness of global cities has declined slightly. This also indicates that if the trade war between major countries continues, it will not only weaken the competitiveness of cities in each country, but also weaken the competitiveness of global cities.
Top 20 global cities’ economic competitiveness in 2019
Source: China Academy of Social Sciences Urban and Competitiveness Index Database.
Among the top 20, North America has 9 seats, Asia has 8 seats and Western Europe has 3 seats. Overall, the top 20 cities in the world are fiercely competitive, and their rankings have changed significantly. Fourteen cities have changed, with the largest change of four rankings. Global comprehensive centers and science and technology centers have generally improved, while professional cities and manufacturing centers have generally declined.
From the ranking of global economic competitiveness of China cities, it can be seen that the overall ranking rises less and falls more, while the average value drops, and the specific ranking has a remarkable Matthew effect. From the index, the overall level has declined and the gap between cities has narrowed. Regionally, cities in the eastern and central regions rose more and fell less, while other cities fell more and rose less.
According to the report, five cities in China rank among the top 20, namely Shenzhen 4th, Shanghai 10th, Hong Kong 13th, Beijing 17th and Guangzhou 18th. Compared with last year, Shanghai rose 3 places, Beijing rose 2 places, Hong Kong fell 2 places, Guangzhou fell 4 places, and Shanghai surpassed Hong Kong.
There are 20 cities in the top 100, in addition to the above five cities, including:
Suzhou (25), Nanjing (42), Wuhan (43), Taipei (44), Chengdu (54), Hangzhou (64), Wuxi (65), Changsha (68), Qingdao (76), Chongqing (81), Tianjin (82) and Foshan (88).
Compared with last year’s ranking, Ningbo rose 11 places, Hangzhou rose 10 places, Qingdao and Foshan rose 9 places, Changzhou rose 8 places, Chengdu rose 6 places, Zhengzhou rose 5 places, Nanjing and Changsha rose 3 places, Suzhou and Taipei rose 2 places, while Tianjin fell 40 places.
Zooming into the top 200 in the world, 39 China cities were shortlisted this time, with Taizhou, Xi ‘an, Fuzhou and Dongguan ranking greatly improved, while Shenyang and Dalian dropped by 30 and 60 respectively.
According to the report, in terms of spatial distribution, cities with rising global urban competitiveness are mainly distributed in the west coast cities of the United States at 100 W, western European cities at 20 E and hancheng city, China and Japan at 110 ~ 140 E, and their latitudes are concentrated between 25 ~ 55 N. At the same time, "cities in northern China and eastern Europe have dropped more, while those in southern China and India have generally increased more".
Sustainable competitiveness
Asia has the most finalists in the top 200 cities.
In terms of sustainable competitiveness, the top 20 cities basically include the major cities in the world and the central cities of developed countries, among which five cities in the United States were selected, nine in Europe and six in Asia.
Top 20 global sustainable competitiveness in 2019
Source: China Academy of Social Sciences Urban and Competitiveness Index Database.
According to the report, the top 20 cities almost represent the characteristics and development of the country where they are located. "These top world cities can already be regarded as symbols of the development and achievements of the whole country."
As far as the top 200 cities are concerned, Asia has the largest number of cities and Europe has the highest average.
Among them, 65 cities in Asia were shortlisted, indicating that Asia, as the fastest-growing region in the world, has a strong upward trend, but at the same time, we can also see that the average value of the top 200 cities in Asia is low, and the sustainable competitiveness needs to be further improved. In North America and Europe, 60 cities and 58 cities respectively entered the top 200. Among them, the average sustainable competitiveness of European cities is the highest, and the quality of urban development is worthy of recognition.
The report also makes a comparative analysis of the top ten urban agglomerations in the world. It is found that the strength of urban agglomerations in the United States and Britain is outstanding. Although the urban agglomerations in developing countries such as China and India are large in scale, the gap between the central cities and surrounding cities is large and the development is uneven.
It is worth noting that because there are fewer cities in the cluster,The average sustainable competitiveness index of Seoul urban agglomeration ranks first in the world.. Among the European urban agglomerations,Rhine-Ruhr urban agglomeration has the smallest standard deviation.It shows the balance of urban development in old western European countries.
As far as China cities are concerned, the report believes that the sustainable competitiveness is steadily improving, and the average value is close to the global average, and the balance is better than the global average.
According to the data, two cities in China entered the top 20 this year, among which Hongkong ranked seventh in the world and Shenzhen ranked 19th in the world.
In addition, seven cities have entered the top 100 in the world:
Taipei (23), Shanghai (29), Beijing (38), Suzhou (58), Guangzhou (67), Nanjing (83) and Xiamen (94).
Another 22 cities live between 101 and 200:
Wuxi (103), Tianjin (108), Foshan (109), Taichung (110), Dongguan (121), Wuhan (122), Kaohsiung (124), Hangzhou (130), Chengdu (143), Qingdao (144) and Macau (144).
Urban sustainable development
Housing burden and production and consumption patterns are common shortcomings.
In fact, in the process of global rapid urbanization, urban sustainable development has become one of the most important issues, which has attracted wide attention from all walks of life around the world.
For example, as mentioned at the beginning of the article."Addis Ababa Action Agenda"Is an important achievement of the third United Nations International Conference on Financing for Development.
In July 2015, delegates from 193 United Nations Member States reached an agreement on global financial reform and adopted the above-mentioned document through negotiations. The then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon commented that this agreement is a key step forward in the process of building a sustainable future for all, and it provides a global framework for financing sustainable development.
Interestingly, this report has further strengthened the concern for sustainable development.It is the first time to try to measure the implementation progress of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals from the perspective of urban sustainable competitiveness.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are committed to eradicating poverty, protecting the earth and ensuring peace and prosperity for mankind through concerted action. This goal was put forward in September 2015, aiming at guiding all member countries to thoroughly solve the development problems in social, economic and environmental dimensions in a comprehensive way in the 15 years from 2015 to 2030, and move towards the road of sustainable development.
The report found that almost all countries or cities have shortcomings in their sustainable development goals to varying degrees.
In South America, the goals of clean energy, sustainable production and consumption and climate action are better than the world average, while others are equal to or lower than the global average.
Asian cities are better than the world average in terms of zero hunger, drinking water and sanitation, underwater creatures, land creatures, peace and justice, and the rest are equal to or lower than the global average.
Image source: photo network
The implementation level of most sustainable development goals in European cities is much higher than the global average, but they face great challenges in climate action and sustainable consumption and production.
North America has made good progress as a whole, but its performance in climate action and peace and justice needs to be improved.
Most indicators of the sustainable development goals of African cities are far below the world average, and only a few indicators perform well.
Specifically, item 11 of the sustainable development goal puts forward "building inclusive, safe, disaster-resistant and sustainable cities and human settlements". The monitoring results of this goal show that:Housing burden, social equity, heritage protection, production and consumption patterns and social security are the common shortcomings of urban sustainable development goals.
Ni Pengfei, the report leader, director of the Center for Urban and Competitiveness Research of China Academy of Social Sciences, and chief urban economist of the joint research group of China Academy of Social Sciences and UN-Habitat, said that at the request of the United Nations, starting from this year, the implementation progress of the global sustainable development goals will be evaluated from the perspective of cities every year to determine the progress of cities around the world in achieving the United Nations 2030 goals.
Global city classification
Beijing ranks among the "global cities", and Chengdu and Nanjing are eye-catching.
Grading global cities is a highlight of this report.
"Urban classification is an issue of special concern to the whole world. Some international institutions have done research before. This year, we and UN-Habitat have formulated a new research standard to evaluate 1006 cities around the world." Ni Pengfei said.
This assessment consideredUrban agglomeration and connectivity.Among them, the degree of agglomeration refers to the number of elements of a city’s agglomeration; Connectivity refers to the relationship between a city and other cities in the urban system.
Global urban classification index system
Image source: Economic Daily
As a global city, there are three A+ cities, new york, London and Tokyo. There are two A grades, Beijing and Paris;
As an international hub city: the number of B+ cities is 3, including Seoul, Shanghai and Chicago; There are 26 B grades, mainly including: Singapore, Hong Kong, Sydney, Dublin, Munich, Toronto, Osaka, etc.
As an international gateway city, the number of C+ cities is 29, mainly including Melbourne, Buenos Aires, Dubai, Warsaw and Copenhagen.
Judging from the intercontinental distribution of different levels of cities, there are obvious differences between the north and the south in the global urban system, and the north still has absolute advantages; From the perspective of national distribution of cities with different levels, cities in developed countries have performed better in the global urban system. However, cities in developing countries, such as China and Indian, are rising rapidly.
Look back to China.Beijing is the only city in developing countries that has been shortlisted for Class A..As a global city, Beijing ranks fourth in the city-level score, with its agglomeration and connectivity ranking 5 and 2 respectively, and Beijing has outstanding advantages in connectivity; Among them, hard contact ranks second, soft contact ranks fourth, and Beijing is particularly outstanding in hard contact.
Image source: photo network
Look at Shanghai again. Shanghai is rated as B+ and is an international hub city. Its city-level score ranks seventh, among which the degree of agglomeration and the degree of connection rank 9 and 8 respectively. However, the development of its soft connection and hard connection are not balanced, ranking 27 and 7 respectively, and the soft connection is relatively "slow".
Among the C cities, 22 China cities were selected. There are four C+ s-Guangzhou (40), Shenzhen (42), Chengdu (59) and Nanjing (60). It is worth noting that Nanjing has achieved "breakthrough" among the cities in the Yangtze River Delta.
While the other 18 cities got C grade, among which Hangzhou (66), Wuhan (69), Tianjin (73), Chongqing (76), Xi ‘an (77) and Qingdao (96) all scored in the top 100 cities in the world.
"Generally speaking, C+ cities in China have more advantages in soft agglomeration, and most C-level cities also have advantages in soft agglomeration." The report pointed out.
On the whole, China cities perform better in agglomeration, but there are shortcomings in connection.According to the report, the only city with high connectivity in China is Beijing, while the number of cities with medium connectivity and low connectivity is 10 and 280 respectively. "In terms of hard and soft connectivity, most cities in China still need to improve".
Cities of Grade C and above in China
Source: China Academy of Social Sciences Urban and Competitiveness Index Database.
Text │ Zhu Meijie Yu Ruijun
Original title: "Global City Competitiveness List, Perspective on the Real Strength of China City"
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