Vancouver ranked North America's top large city of the future

A new ranking has placed Vancouver as one of the world’s most promising economic and investment locations of the future in all of North America.

Financial Times’ fDi Magazine’s latest list of the best North and South American cities for foreign direct investment ranks Vancouver among the top cities in multiple categories.

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For the ranking, fDi Magazine collected data using the “specialist online tools fDi Benchmark and fDi Markets.” The cities were then ranked according to five main categories: Economic Potential, Business Friendliness, Human Capital and Lifestyle, Cost-Effectiveness, and Connectivity.

Vancouver was named fDi’s Americas City of the Future in the “large cities” category. Cities in this category are required to have either an immediate city population over 500,000, as well as a Larger Urban Zone (LUZ) population of more than 1 million.

“The city’s success this year is explained by its appearance among the top 10 across almost every category studied,” reads the report.

The report adds that over a third of the projects analyzed for this ranking were in the software and IT services sector.

During last year’s study, Vancouver was ranked first in North America for high-tech software job growth. Shortly after the 2020 ranking was released, Amazon announced that it would take over 1.1 million sq ft of office space at the former Canada Post building in downtown Vancouver, add another 3,000 jobs to Vancouver’s technology hub

“Vancouver’s position as a global hub city with a diverse and dynamic population has shaped us into a welcoming, progressive place that continually looks to the future,” said Mayor Kennedy Stewart.

In addition to placing first overall for large cities, Vancouver also ranked first in large cities for business friendliness, second for economic potential, sixth for human lifestyle and capital, and fifth for connectivity.

Business Friendliness

Economic Potential

Human Capital and Hustle

Connectivity

Vancouver also ranked 18th in the top 25 North American cities for foreign direct strategies for 2021 to 2022.

When it comes to the overall ranking, however, Vancouver failed to break the top 10. New York City, Toronto, and San Francisco dominated the list, ranking first, second, and third, respectively. Montreal was the only other Canadian city to break the top 10, placing fourth.

The full report can be downloaded through the magazine’s website.