The registered institute Consumer Forum as a professional cooperating partner for the Czech Republic, the Swiss institute IMD and the University of Technology and Design in Singapore (SUTD) today jointly published the results of the third year of a unique ranking of 118 world cities. .

The status of a globally recognized smart city is important for attracting talent and investment. The Smart City Index is a necessary complement to the traditional competitiveness ranking that IMD has been publishing for three decades.

Only Singapore achieved the best AAA rating. The second best AA rating went to two cities, Geneva and Oslo. Taipei also reached the top ten as the fourth metropolis of Taiwan, followed by Lausanne, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Geneva, New Zealand’s Auckland and Bilbao in Switzerland. Vienna is the eleventh and is followed by the best-rated city on the American continent, which it has become New York.

For example, Berlin came in 50th place in front of Prague in the overall 78th place with the CCC ranking, Moscow came in (54th), Paris (61.), but also Beijing (69.) or Warsaw (75). Bratislava is in 96th position and Budapest (97th) took the place right behind it. The worst rated cities in the ranking this year remained in the Brazilian cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro with the lowest D rating.

For the second year in a row, Prague is falling in the ranking. In the first year in 2019, with a BBB rating, it took an excellent 19th place just behind Vienna and Bologna. In the ranking so far, it has fallen to the overall 44th position. This year’s drop to 78th place represents the largest year-on-year decline of all monitored cities. On the contrary, the biggest jump to a better position was the South Korean Seoul with a shift of 34 places compared to last year.

“Prague has not really deteriorated as much in two years as a simple change in index placement would suggest. In the meantime, new categories have started to be monitored in the index, such as information on traffic jams or the availability of housing, in which Prague is not doing well. However, the index still highly values, for example, cultural enjoyment, which remains top notch in the global comparison, and Prague continues to have a dominant position in the global comparison of the city in terms of job opportunities and access to education. ” cooperates. The decline in Prague in the current ranking was also due to a slight decrease in ratings for the mostly monitored categories of smart city functionalities, such as the benefits of online processing of personal data to speed up administrative tasks, strengthening the feeling of security for CCTV cameras or benefits of applications for parking speed in the city. “The current decline in the ranking compared to the first year means that Praguers already expect greater real benefits for their lives from applications and digital solutions. It is no longer enough that an application exists at all. Thanks to the functionalities of a smart city, they want to get to where they need to go faster, manage their administrative matters more easily or really feel safe. ”Explains Kryštof Kruliš from the Consumer Forum.

A significant drop in the ranking did not only affect Prague. In that period, a similar proposal was also recorded by San Francisco, for example, which descended from the position of the smartest city in the USA in the global 12th place in the first year in the first year to the current 60th place. The fate of Prague also follows Italian Bologna, which in the first year was only 18th above Prague in the overall 18th place and in the current ranking 77th place, is once again ahead of Prague by one position. In addition, the location of individual cities in the rankings issued its gradual expansion. In the current ranking, cities such as Bordeaux, Glasgow, Lausanne, Leeds, Lille, which are all in front of Prague, are newly evaluated.

The Swiss IMD and the University of Singapore SUTD in the ranking are based on how the city is perceived by its citizens who live and work in it. In preparing the index, 15,000 city dwellers around the world were interviewed. The results of the interviews are combined with the date of the UN Human Development Index (HDI).

The ranking is accessible worldwide from 28. 10. 2021 01:00 TOTAL at:

https://www.imd.org/smart-city-observatory/smart-city-index/

Consumer Forum, z.ú. is an open non-profit platform for communication between citizens, civic associations, companies and the state. We connect consumer organizations and companies operating on the domestic market in order to defend the interests of Czech consumers, especially in areas such as retail, shared economy, e-commerce, real estate market or financial services.