Calgary narrowly makes it into top 50 for best cities in 2020: report

Calgary has been ranked among the top 50 best cities in the world, according to Resonance Consultancy’s World Best Cities 2020 report.

The tourism, real estate, and economic development advisor, based out of Vancouver and New York, releases the ranking annually. This year, Calgary placed 48th, just after Frankfurt, Germany and ahead of Phoenix, US, and is the fourth highest Canadian city on the list, behind Toronto (17th), Vancouver (41st), and Montreal (45th).

The report ranks the relative quality of the world’s “principal cities” — the largest city in each metropolitan statistical area — with populations of one million or more, based on categories ranging from the physical place to prosperity to people.

“The World’s Best Cities rankings are composed of experiential factors that people consider most important in choosing a city to live and visit, as well as empirical factors that business decision-makers consider important for business or investment,” says Resonance Consultancy President and CEO Chris Fair in a release.

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The report analyzes cities based on the following categories:

Place – Focuses on the layers of a location’s physical experience. Think weather, safety, neighbourhoods and landmarks, and the great outdoors.
Product – Described as the ranking of a city’s “hardware,” looks at airport connectivity, attractions, museums, university rankings, and the like.
Prosperity – Focuses on number of Global 500 corporate headquarters and GDP — Gross Domestic Product — per capita.
Programming – Measuring the ” the experiential pillars of a great visit: food, shows, shopping and nightlife,” this category encompasses culture, nightlife, dining, and shopping.
Promotion – Covering a city’s “ability to tell its story,” this section looks at Facebook check-ins, TripAdvisor reviews, Google searches, Instagram hashtags, and more.
People – This measures how diverse a city’s population is, as well as the percentage of the population with a bachelor’s degree or higher.

The following are the World Best Cities 2020 Top 20:

1. London, England
2. New York, United States
3. Paris, France
4. Tokyo, Japan
5. Moscow, Russia
6. Dubai, United Arab Emirates
7. Singapore, Singapore
8. Barcelona, Spain
9. Los Angeles, United States
10. Rome, Italy
11. San Francisco, United States
12. Madrid, Spain
13. Chicago, United States
14. Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
15. Amsterdam, Netherlands
16. Beijing, China
17. Toronto, Canada
18. Doha, Qatar
19. Hong Kong, China
20. San Diego, United States

Other Canadian cities to make the top 100 included Ottawa at #77 and Edmonton at #83.

With files from Kayla Gladysz