Ottawa ranked top global city by Toronto think tank

nestor e. arellano

11 years ago

The nation’s capital was judged the top city in the world in terms of technology, talent and tolerance in a recent ranking of municipalities around the world by a Toronto-based think tank.

Ottawa topped Seattle, Oslo, District of Columbia, Amsterdam, Tel Aviv and other cities in the Martin Prosperity Institute’s Global Cities project which examines how cities around the world are performing in what it calls the “creative economy.” The institute studies the role sub-national factors such as location, place and city region in global economic prosperity. It is part of the Rothman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

(Click on the image to access the Global Cities interactive map)

“We took the top cities, based on GDP (gross domestic product) worldwide and analyzed them based upon the Three T’s (talent, technology and tolerance) and a fourth measure of amenities and quality of place,” a statement from the institute said. “Out of the 61 global cities studied, Ottawa, Canada was found to be the number one city in our list.”

The institute said Ottawa received high grades in each of the categories but got the highest marks for talent over the other cities.

The metrics for talent was comprised of factors such as: education spending; educational institutions; creative class share; and educated population.

Ottawa topped the talent category because it had one of the highest scores in creative class shares (45.9 per cent) and one of the highest in human capital shares (35.4 per cent).

Seattle, which ranked number two overall received balanced grades but got the highest scores for technology and amenities & quality life categories.

The other top 10 cities were:

Oslo (#3)
District of Columbia (#4)
Amsterdam (#4)
London (#6)
Tel Aviv (#6)
Copenhagen (#6)
Calgary (#9)
New York-Newark (#9)

Cities outside Europe and North America also got high marks.

For example, Singapore, Seoul and Cape Town received high overall grades and “scored highly” in the talent, technology and amenities categories.

Despite having an abundance of talented individuals, many cities also received very low marks in tolerance, the research found.

“Tolerance is an important indicator as it is a crucial attribute to attracting the creative class, and there are many benefits to accepting different cultures, sexual orientations, religions and ways of life,” the institute said. “In many cases, certain cities would have landed much higher in the overall rankings if not for their low tolerance grades.”