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The world’ s largest metropolitan economies can be classified into seven groups that reveal their distinct competitive advantages in the global economy. A new report from the Brookings Institution’ s Metropolitan Policy Program introduces a typology that categorizes global cities and assesses the opportunities and challenges they confront for powering the next wave of global economic growth.
The report, “Redefining global cities: The seven types of global metro economies,’ by Brookings Fellow Joseph Parilla and former Brookings Research Analyst and Associate Fellow Jesus Leal Trujillo uses a first-f-its-kind database of dozens of indicators to examine global city economic characteristics, industrial structure, and key competitiveness factors: tradable clusters, innovation, talent, and infrastructure connectivity. Their analysis focuses on the 123 largest metropolitan economies in the world, which collectively account for one-third of global GDP despite containing only 13 percent of global population.
Analysis of these data reveals seven types of global cities’”Global Giants, Asian Anchors, Emerging Gateways, Factory China, Knowledge Capitals, American Middleweights, and International Middleweights‘”each with its own distinctive assets, challenges, and growth trajectories.
“This report provides fresh evidence that there is no one way to be a global city. Cities that understand their unique niche in the global economy are better positioned to create economic strategies that will be successful in the long-term.
The report’”and its accompanying online interactive’”uses the typology to help metro decision makers understand the local assets that drive economic competitiveness, benchmark their performance against peer cities, and identify the global innovations most relevant for local growth and prosperity.