Singapore has climbed two spots to eleventh place on the Schroders Global Cities Index for 2020. It ranks second in Asia after Hong Kong, which fell three spots to take sixth place.
Singapore’s better ranking follows the introduction of a transport score for the index, in addition to the existing economic, environmental, and innovation metrics. Each metric has a total score of 10.
Singapore ranked third overall in transport, with a score 9.64. Singapore also ranked in the top ten for innovation, scoring 8.29.
Hugo Machin, Schroder’s portfolio manager and co-head of global cities, says that Singapore’s good transport score comes by virtue of its small landmass and efficient transport landscape.
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“Singapore is small by landmass and very efficient, hence the good transport score. Also if you take traffic data it scores well given the management of cars on the road, unlike LA. The airport data is self-explanatory showing how well connected Singapore is compared to top international rivals in the region,” he says.
Singapore scored lowest for the environmental metric, ranking 23rd out of the top 30 cities. Machin attributes to this Singapore’s location in a hot latitude, though he notes that this is compensated by the country’s “forward thinking environmental policy to make the city more sustainable in terms of its basic needs, such as water.”
London regained the top spot in the index, knocking San Francisco down to the second place, followed by Boston, Paris and New York.
Besides Singapore and Hong Kong, other Asian cities that made the top 30 include Beijing, which fell from 19th to 25th place, while Shanghai fell from 21st to 28th place. On the flipside, Shenzhen jumped from 44th to 19th place, while Nanjing climbed from 41st to 27th place.
Hangzhou and Chengdu are also on the list at 23rd and 30th places respectively.
