European Cities Monitor

The European Cities Monitor 2009 has recently been published, by Cushman and Wakefield, a global real estate firm. They've been doing it since 1990 and it is, essentially, a survey of Europe's major business centres.


This edition contains some well known facts - London, Paris and Frankfurt (in that order) remain at the top of the pile in relation to doing business in Europe. However, there are many more interesting nuggets, such as:

• Birmingham is the biggest mover, up to 14th;
• Rome moved up three places, but only from 25th to 22nd; and
  
• Istanbul moved from 29th to 27th.

Lots of work has been done in this area, both from an academic point of view and from the private sector. However, the same things consistently emerge from research on doing business in cities. Hence, the most important things identified this year are quite familiar:

1. Easy access to markets, customers, clients;
2. Availability of qualified staff;
3. Quality of telecommunications;
4. Transport links with other cities, and internationally...

I could go on, but each of these were all reported as essential by more than 50% of survey respondents. Finally, what about quality of life? The top five cities are as follows:

1. Barcelona
2. Geneva
3. Munich
4. Oslo
5. Madrid

In total, 500 companies were surveyed and 34 cities were included in the analysis.