Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1179

Resonance Consultancy – they do brands and strategies for places and products – has just released a new report called: World’s Best City Brands – A Global Ranking of Place Equity.

With all of these sorts of rankings, it really depends on the research methodology being used and the rigor in which it is being applied. In this case, they evaluated each city based on “six pillars of equity”:

1. Place: Perceived quality of a city’s natural and built environment
   

2. Product: A city’s key institutions, attraction and infrastructure
   

3. Programming: The arts, culture and entertainment in a city
   

4. People: Immigration and diversity of a city
   

5. Prosperity: Employment, GDP per capita entertainment in a city and corporate head offices
   

6. Promotion: Quantity of articles, references of a city and recommendations online
   

What’s perhaps unique about this study is that it combines measurable statistics with “visitor perception metrics” – data that they mined from social media. Here’s an excerpt from the methodology page:

“Our team became interested in the way visitors and citizens themselves influence the identity and perception of cities. Increasingly, they do it through their evaluation of experiences on social media and via the comments, images and reviews they share with family, friends and people around the world. These opinions and attitudes, much more than traditional marketing, influence the way people perceive places today.”

This is a fascinating shift for city brands and is something that we have discussed before on this blog . All of us are now involved in telling the story of the places in which we live and visit.

The entire report is well done and worth a read. It’s also a free download  (you’ll need to enter your contact info). But below are the top 10 world’s best city brands. Not really any surprises for me. What about for you?

I have written about Foursquare a number of times over the years ( here and here ) and I continue to be a regular user. I am intrigued by all of the location-based data that they collect through their apps. 

Below is a recent Recode Decode (podcast) with Dennis Crowley (co-founder) and Jeff Glueck (CEO) of Foursquare. They are talking about what’s next for the company. If you can’t see it below, click here .

https://art19.com/shows/recode-decode/episodes/aa400a60-ebc1-49bb-96b1-0d7aac7ca9e8/embed?theme=black

Here’s a content sample from Recode :

Today, Foursquare makes most of its money from selling that data to big companies, calling itself a “location intelligence company.” But as co-founder Dennis Crowley and CEO Jeff Glueck explained on the latest episode of Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher, they haven’t stopped thinking about everyday users.

“Imagine a friend is walking alongside you,” Crowley said. “Can we make a personality like that, that talks to you in that sense? It’s not 30 years out. We’re going to be playing with this stuff a year from now.”

“I want to make that Scarlett Johansson that whispers in your ear , but it’s all about local places and local discovery,” he added. “I want to replicate the experience of walking through the city with a friend that knows the city inside and out, and I want to make that for millions of people.”

I thought some of you might find this interesting.

Aaron Renn has  a few observations  up on his blog from a recent trip to San Francisco. Number 2 is as follows:

“A curiously low energy city.  It’s tough to judge any American city’s street energy after living in New York, but San Francisco felt basically dead. Tourist areas around Union Square and the Embarcadero were crowded, and the Mission on a Friday night was hopping, but otherwise the city was very quiet. Haight-Ashbury was nearly deserted and many neighborhoods had the feel of a ghost town. It’s very strange to be walking around a city with such a dense built fabric but so few people.”

I feel this way every, single, time, I visit San Francisco. I love San Francisco, but outside the main draws, the city feels eerily quiet. I have never understood why that is the case.

This is something that I am sensitive to because I find it even impacts my own energy levels. For instance, Sundays in Toronto often feel too quiet for me. Fewer pedestrians. Slower drivers. Our collective metabolic rate slows down.

I love the hustle of a busy city.