El mahjoub Dasaa
Casablanca ranked 101 globally and sixth in Africa in “The Global Cities Report”, which was conducted by the management consultants Kearney, which looks at the impact of socio-economic and political developments on cities and their futures. It seeks to quantify the extent to which a city can attract, retain, and generate global flows of capital, people, and ideas.
At the level of the Middle East, Dubai retained its lead, and rose one place to 22nd place in the world rankings, which is the highest rating it has recorded so far, while the capital, Abu Dhabi, made a leap at the regional level and reached advanced positions in the world rankings thanks to the increase in its commercial activity and political participation.
The report confirmed that the Middle East has managed to outperform China in the cultural experience category in the Global Cities Index, and today the region shows similar results with the Asia-Pacific region, and this may be attributed to the continuous efforts made by the countries of the region to improve the cultural experience.
Conversely, improvements in the city’s personal well-being, sporting events and culinary offerings have propelled the UK capital to the top spot for cultural experience for the first time, ahead of Paris, New York and Los Angeles, but the report also reveals weaker-than-normal performance in human capital and business activity. In London, because of the pandemic and Brexit, the city ranked second and eighth, respectively.
It is noteworthy that the Global Cities Index measures the performance of 156 cities around the world through five dimensions: business activity, human capital, information exchange, cultural experience, and political participation.
The index consists of two parts: the Global Cities Index (GCI), which is a snapshot of the current state of the world’s major urban areas, and the Global Cities Outlook (GCO), which is a prediction of the potential of cities and a look at the developments in recent months. Six cities from the Kingdom were evaluated in this year’s report, namely, Riyadh, Jeddah, Medina, Makkah, Abha, and Dammam.
