Oxford Economics released its inaugural Global Cities Index on Tuesday, presenting a comprehensive evaluation of the world's 1,000 largest urban economies. The index's "Quality of Life" parameter measures the benefits of living in each city and residents’ wellbeing, covering financial and health outcomes, as well as access to amenities. In this category, India's financial capital, Mumbai, ranked 915, while the national capital, Delhi, ranked 838. The IT hub Bengaluru was placed at 847, and Hyderabad at 882. In contrast, cities like Kochi and Thrissur performed better, with Kochi ranked at 765 and Thrissur at 757.
Despite lower rankings in quality of life, Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru achieved higher overall positions compared to Indian cities that surpassed them in this aspect. Mumbai stood at 427, Delhi at 350, and Bengaluru at 411 in the overall rankings. The report noted that an uneven economic outlook across regions and persistent inflationary concerns could negatively impact the economic scores of many locations. Additionally, debt sustainability remains a challenge for many developing countries in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic and a period of heightened interest rates, further threatening their cities' economies.
The Global Cities Index uses five categories to rank the cities: Economics, Human Capital, Quality of Life, Environment, and Governance. Data for each indicator was normalized, with the highest-scoring city assigned a score of 100 and the lowest a score of 0, distributing the rest of the cities' scores across that range. The scores for each indicator within a category were combined to create a total score for that category for each city. These total scores were then normalized, and the final overall score for each city was calculated by taking a weighted average of each category's normalized score. The overall city ranking was determined with the following weightages: Economics (30%), Human Capital (25%), Quality of Life (25%), Environment (10%), and Governance (10%).