Global City Importance Model
What are the Most Important Cities in the World?
Early 2025 Ratings

The “Global City Importance Model” (GCIM) scores each urban area globally according to its relative importance. It uses forty regularly updated data sources across four dimensions (economic, political, cultural, and demographic) to calculate importance, with economic output and international geopolitical influence comprising the largest scoring factors:

The numerical scores are then divided into five peer groups, or “tiers”, based on the importance of the cities within the tiers:

• Tier 1-Global City
• Tier 2-Major City
• Tier 3-Regional City
• Tier 4-Subregional City
• Tier 5-Locally Important City

Each tier is further divided into three groups or “ratings” (“A”, “B”, “C”), with similar scoring cities receiving the same rating. A special rating (“1-S”) is also created to clearly delineate the top scoring city.

Here are the Top 150 most important cities globally according to the Early 2025 Model:

According to the Early 2025 GCIM, New York is currently the world’s most important city—followed by Washington, Beijing, London, Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, the Northern Pearl River Delta (including Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Dongguan), and Seoul.

Together, these eleven cities as rated as the world’s “Tier 1” or “Global” cities.

Next, here’s a look at the Top 15 most important cities across each of the world’s nine major geographical and cultural regions:

New York is currently the most important city in Northern America ; London is the dominant city in Europe ; and Beijing, the capital of the world’s second most important geopolitical power, is currently East & Southeast Asia’s leading city.

In Latin America, Mexico City and São Paulo both compete as the region’s most important city—with a slight edge going to Mexico City. There’s a similar situation in the MENA region, as both Istanbul and Dubai score similarly—but with Istanbul slightly ahead. And in South Asia, Delhi and Mumbai both dominate the region.

Johannesburg is the current top city in Sub-Saharan Africa, while Moscow is the dominant city in the former Soviet Union’s territory. Meanwhile, Sydney is the most important city in Oceania, with Melbourne following closely behind.

Next, here’s a closer look at the three regions with the most high-rated cities: Northern America (i.e., the U.S. and Canada), Europe, and East and Southeast Asia:

Zooming in to Northern America as a region, here’s a closer look at the 150 most important cities in the U.S. and Canada:

And finally, by popular request, here’s a look at the 150 most important cities in just the United States:

According to the Early 2025 GCIM, New York is currently the most important U.S. city—followed by Washington, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. These cities anchor the four current U.S. power centers—Wall Street (New York), the U.S. Government (Washington), Hollywood (Los Angeles), and Silicon Valley (San Francisco)—and have outsized global importance. As such, they are considered “Tier 1” or “Global” cities.

The next most important U.S. cities include Chicago, Boston, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Seattle, and Philadelphia—all of which are significant economic, population, and cultural centers. These eight cities are classified as “Tier 2” or “Major” cities.

Together, the U.S.’s “Tier 1” and “Tier 2” cities comprise more than 10% of the entire global economy.

Originally intended for cartographic use, the project began in 2007 and is currently in its 15th iteration.

Inspired by the Ranally City Rating System and the Chinese City Tier System, the ranking was born out of frustration with other city ranking projects, which too often focus solely on narrow metrics like the presence of professional service firms (GaWC) or on soft attributes like liveability, reputation, and environmental factors (Kearney, Oxford Economics)—rather than actual economic and political importance.

To that end, one of the key differentiators of the GCIM is that geopolitical power is taken into considerable account (via the “Global Geopolitical Power Model”), especially for cities serving as capitals and financial centers.

As an example, part of why New York currently rates as the most important city globally, among other factors, is because it serves as the primary financial center of the current top geopolitical power, the United States.

Unlike other city rankings, growth rates and projections do not factor into scoring. Instead, the GCIM aims to provide a snapshot of the world as it currently is—not as it one day might be. To that end, the main purpose of the Model is to provide a reasonable, off-the-shelf listing of the Top 5, Top 10, Top 50, Top 100, etc. on a global, regional, and national level for the current year.

“Importance”, in this context, is defined as the amount of influence, impact, and control a given city exerts upon the rest of the world. Put another way, it’s the degree of disruption (if any) the rest of the world would experience if a given city suddenly disappeared.

In this context, “city” is used as a simplified term for “urban area”, as defined by Demographia in the “Demographia World Urban Areas” project:

An urban area—i.e., “built-up urban area,” urbanized area, or urban agglomeration—is a continuously built up land mass of urban development that is within a labor market. An urban area contains no rural land and is best thought of as the “urban footprint”—the lighted area (“city lights”) that can be observed from an airplane or satellite on a clear night.

Apart from a handful of exceptions, the GCIM uses Demograhia’s urban area delineations for areas with populations greater than 500,000. For smaller areas, official government delineations are used, often with consultation of the European Commission’s “Global Human Settlement Layer”.

The exceptions mentioned above are for urban areas that are sometimes combined in other sources or that display increasing evidence of functioning as a single urban area—such as the Northern Pearl River Delta (Shenzhen-Guangzhou-Dongguan), the Rhine-Ruhr (Ruhr-Cologne-Düsseldorf), and the Randstad (Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Hague). In these cases, the model reports ratings for both the combined and separate urban areas.

(It’s important to keep in mind that the model is evaluating cities at a global scale. So areas that are sometimes broken into separate urban areas for statistical or other nuanced reasons at the regional or national level—such as San Francisco and San Jose—are more meaningfully conceptualized as single areas at the zoomed out global level.)

In a handful of other cases, some cities that Demographia combines into single urban areas with other larger cities—such as Baltimore (combined with Washington), New Haven (combined with New York), and Gold Coast (combined with Brisbane)—receive their own ratings in the GCIM.

Urban areas are confined to single sovereign states and jurisdictions, unless there is freedom of movement between the adjacent states / jurisdictions. In this context, “freedom of movement” means that there are no customs or immigration facilities at the borders—or that arrangements are in place, such as work permits, allowing for unrestricted border crossing. So as an example, Detroit and Windsor are considered separate urban areas—as are San Diego and Tijuana. Hong Kong and Macau are also considered separate urban areas from the rest of the Pearl River Delta because of border controls.

“Region” is being defined as one of the world’s nine major geographic and cultural regions: Northern America, Latin America (including Brazil and the Caribbean), Europe (excluding Russia and Turkey), the Middle East & North Africa (including Turkey), Sub-Saharan Africa, Russia & Central Asia (i.e., the Asian countries of the former Soviet Union), South Asia (including India), East & Southeast Asia, and Oceania.

“Global City” has become a bit of a loaded term in recent years, with different meanings in different contexts.

The model is titled the “Global City Importance Model” because it evaluates all cities globally—and because importance is evaluated relative to all other cities at the global level. (In contrast, some city ranking projects—e.g., Kearney, Global Power City Index—only rank a small set of pre-selected cities.)

Cities classified as “Global Cities” by the model are simply cities that have an outsized impact on the rest of the world—as measured by a combination of economic, political, cultural, and demographic factors. They have some degree of impact across all regions.

Currently, only eleven cities are considered “Global Cities”:

A city rated as a “Major City” is a city that has moderate importance globally. It has impact across more than one region—but generally not all regions. These cities often have a mix of both global and regional attributes and generally, but not always, have urban area populations greater than 5,000,000.

A city rated as a “Regional City” is a city that has high importance within its larger region—but relatively low importance globally. These cities generally, but not always, have urban area populations greater than 500,000.

A city rated as a “Subregional City” is a city that’s important within a section of one of the nine major regions listed above. It can be a city that’s important within a group of smaller countries (e.g., Southern Africa, the Balkans); a city that’s important within the whole of a medium-sized country (e.g., Spain, Saudi Arabia, South Africa); or a city that’s important within a section of larger country like the United States or China (e.g., the U.S. Midwest, North China).

“Subregional Cities” generally have urban area populations greater than 50,000.

A city rated as a “Locally Important City” is a city that’s important within its immeadiate area—but not regionally. They’re usually cities that are only important within a first-level administrative division of a country, such as an average-sized U.S. state. (Nearly all U.S. Micropolitan cities fall into this group.)

“Locally Important Cities” have urban area populations of at least 5,000.

Cities receiving “A” ratings should be thought of as cities that nearly qualified for the next tier above, but were deficient in some important regard. For example, a city with a “2-A” rating can be thought of as an Almost Global City; and a city with a “3-A” rating can be thought of as an Almost Major City, etc.

Note that there is a very high bar for cities to be rated “Regional”, an even higher bar for cities to be rated “Major”, and an almost insurmountable bar for cities to be rated “Global” (such that only eleven cities are even able to qualify).

A-rated cities are the cities most likely to move into higher tiers in future ratings.

Cities receiving “B” ratings in a given tier are those that scored lower than cities receiving “A” ratings in the same tier.

Cities receiving “C” ratings in a given tier are those that scored lower than cities receiving “B” ratings—but still solidly qualify for their respective tiers.

C-rated are the cities most likely to move into lower tiers in future ratings.

Arguably the most subjective part of the GCIM are the weightings used—so a few words about these.

For the purposes of the model, economic impact and international geopolitical influence are the two highest weighted factors in determining a city’s importance.

That’s because a city’s economic strength, including its role in global finance, trade, industry, and innovation, often drives its overall importance. Cities with strong economies attract businesses, talent, and investment, which in turn enhances their global influence, cultural impact, and political significance.

While economic strength often lays the foundation of a city’s importance, geopolitical influence amplifies its ability to shape global affairs, making it an equally critical factor. Cities with strong geopolitical influence are critical hubs for political decision-making, international relations, and global governance. They often host the headquarters of international organizations, embassies, and key governmental institutions like legislatures and militaries. And decisions made in the capitals of top geopolitical powers often have far reaching ramifications globally.

New York is currently the highest scoring city—scoring considerably higher than any other. Here’s an incomplete list of factors that contribute to New York’s designation as the most important city globally (note: items listed below are not weighted equally):

• #1 scoring city in “economic” dimension.
• #1 largest metropolitan economy globally.
• #1 largest metropolitan economy of the current top global power (U.S.).
• #13 most populous urban area globally.
• #1 most populous urban area of the current top global power.
• #1 financial center globally.
• #1 financial center of the current top global power.
• Regarded as the global center / “capital” of multiple trillion-dollar global industries (finance, advertising, and media).
• Outlier for number of Global Fortune 500 headquarters (3rd most globally).
• #1 city in stock exchange market capitalization for stock exchanges within its urban area.
• #1 or #2 urban area globally (depending upon source) in number of billionaires.
• #1 number of diplomatic missions of any non-capital city globally.
• Headquarters of a major international organization with enforcement powers (i.e., the United Nations).
• #1 urban area globally in terms foreign-born population. (Likely the most diverse city globally).
• Tied with Los Angeles as highest scoring “culture” city of the current top global power.
• Tied with Paris, London, and Milan as global center of the trillion-dollar global fashion industry.
• Tied with London as global center of the theatre/performing arts industry. (Broadway)
• Regarded as global center of the art market.
• #3 ranked scientific output city globally.
• #11 ranked patent city globally.
• Outlier for international overnight visitors (within the Top 15 globally over the past three years).
• #1 destination for international overnight visitors of the current top global power.
• #2 busiest city airport system globally by passenger traffic.
• Major port by cargo volume (#20 busiest container port globally).
• #2 hub globally for critical undersea internet cable infrastructure.

Version 15.1 (Mid January 2025)

• Scoring weights adjusted: Cultural weightings slightly increased, Demographic weightings slightly decreased.

Version 15.0 (Early January 2025)

• Switched to tiered rating system for clearer delineation of peer cities.

• Scoring weights adjusted for better balance. Economic weighting reduced; Political, Demographic, and Cultural weightings increased. (No single dimension exceeds 30% now.)

• “Visitation” scoring dimension removed, with its inputs migrated into the Demographic and Cultural dimensions.

• GaWC World City ratings removed as a model input.

• “Global Geopolitical Power Model” added as a model input.

Thank you to all who have provided feedback to help strengthen the model in recent years.