Sydney knocks out New York

The latest Anholt-GfK City Brands IndexSM (CBISM) revealed that Australian cities have shown considerable improvement.

Sydney overtakes New York (fourth) to earn a spot back in the top three and Melbourne jumps to seventh place, surpassing Amsterdam (eighth) and Berlin (tenth). These are some of the findings from CBISM, a biennial study conducted in September and October of 2017.

Score change
2017 rank City 2015 rank 2017 vs. 2015

1 Paris 1 +0.51
2 London 2 +0.52
3 Sydney 4 +0.97
4 New York 3 +0.67
5 Los Angeles 5 +0.91
6 Rome 6 +0.65
7 Melbourne 9 +1.64
8 Amsterdam 8 +1.36
9 San Francisco n/a +n/a
10 Berlin 7 +0.75

The study evaluates the power and appeal of each city’s image, providing a holistic and detailed perspective based on six key dimensions:

– Presence (the city’s international status and standing)
– Place (its physical outdoors aspect and transport)
– Prerequisites (basic requirements, such as affordable accommodations and the standard of public amenities)
– People (friendliness, cultural diversity, how safe one feels)
– Pulse (interesting things to do)
– Potential (the economic and educational opportunities available).

[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”27469″ align=”left”]CBISM also demonstrates the precariousness of cities resting on their nation’s brand. A number of cities underperform their nation’s standing as established in this year’s Nation Brands IndexSM. Berlin is a prime example, just managing to hold onto a spot within the top-tier of cities.

“This might be surprising given that Germany as a country took 1st place in the 2017 Nation Brands Index rankings and boasted the most balanced image of all nations surveyed”, Vadim Volos, senior vice president of Social and Strategic Research and head of CBISM at GfK, commented. “This shows that cities cannot rest on their nation’s brand, they must cultivate their own unique images as well.”

Western cities tend to dominate the top half of cities, and in previous years, Western cities benefitted noticeably more than Eastern cities in the global public’s estimations. 2017 shows a change in fortunes with marked improvement for many that is not constrained by region or developmental stage.