This year’s Global Cities report looks at what constitutes best in class across all aspects of property: encompassing building design, occupier trends, place making, investment strategy, and mix of uses. However, success in real estate is often achieved by being on the ground where economic growth is strong, raising the question: what does a best in class city economy look like?

The answer is increasingly about having the culture, diversity, lifestyle, and opportunities necessary to draw talented people. While employers can provide a micro-location – the workplace – where these factors are brought together, they must similarly exist at a city level to generate the critical mass of skilled and creative people that are necessary to feed growth for successful firms. To find out how this is achieved at a city level, we need to look
at a study which occurred in an American telephone factory