London is officially the world’s cleverest city

We love London. That isn’t a secret. Even though we don’t need others to tell us that London’s the best for us to believe it, it’s always nice to know when people appreciate the city as much as we do.

According to Oxford Economics, London is the best city in the world, at least when you measure it by ‘human capital’. That refers to ‘the collective knowledge and skills of a city’s population.’ Basically, we have the most skilled, best educated workforce in the world. This is down to multiple world class universities, a broadly healthy population, and a number of international business headquarters. Pretty impressive, right?

We didn’t do so well in Oxford Economics’ quality of life index, which is measured by things like life expectancy, wealth equality, and access to culture. In fact, few places outside of mainland Europe did. Of the top 10 cities for quality of life, only Canberra in Australia was outside of Europe. Grenoble in France came first, followed by the Australian capital, and then the Swiss city of Bern. London came 292nd. Slightly embarrassing.

But don’t feel too bad. When ranked on all five of the categories the study looked into, which were economics, quality of life, human capital, quality of governance, and environment, we came second, narrowly beaten out by New York. The report listed our three greatest strengths as our universities, our GDP, and our number of corporate HQs, while cost of housing and low economic equality are holding us back. 

The study describes London as a ‘global economic powerhouse’ which has ‘weathered the UK’s recent stumbles related to Brexit and the turmoil of the Prime Minister’s office quite well’. 

So there you have it! We are officially the cleverest and one of the best cities on Earth, but you probably already knew that. If you want to read the whole study you can access it here.

Did you see this London sixth form is now officially one of the world’s best schools?

Plus: A new public square and play area is coming to St Paul’s. 

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