Paul Tostevin and Nicky Wightman join host Guy Ruddle in the studio, while Kevin Kelly in the US and James Macdonald in China dial in, to discuss what are the world’s best places to locate if you’re involved in the tech industry, as they discuss the issue in the Savills podcast.
We’ve launched the third iteration of Savills Tech Cities research programme, measuring 30 cities around the world against 100 individual metrics, ranging from the number of days needed to start a business and the volume of inward venture capital investment through to the cost of a flat white coffee, to establish which are the most successful homes for tech and start-up companies.
Overall, New York comes out as our top Tech City, followed by San Francisco, London, Amsterdam and Boston. For the first time, however, we’ve made ‘mobility’ a large part of Tech Cities as, with global urbanisation rising, a city’s ability to get people from A to B efficiently is rising in importance – particularly as our 30 Tech Cities are among the fastest growing in the world.
Measured by metro area, these cities are forecast to add another 18 million inhabitants in the next decade. Even if a city has a good pool of tech talent, if employees can’t get to their workplace quickly and cheaply this will harm the prospects for tech occupiers. So if a city is good at mobility at the moment it’s an indicator of how well it could perform in the future.
Three elements go into our mobility scores: the availability, density and investment in shared mobility services, the scale and level of innovation in the city’s metro system, and the quality of urban infrastructure.
While not leading in any single category, London ranks first overall for mobility: its public transport system offers smart ticketing (mobile, contactless, Oyster), integrated across all transport modes (from rail to bus). Pollution remains a major issue, however, while upgrading the world’s oldest metro system poses ongoing challenges.
(2).png "Image treatment")