London Has Been Ranked As The Best City In Europe For 2023

London rose to the top of the list of European cities largely thanks to the city's infrastructure, culture, and people.

Hot off being named the Best City In The World for 2023, London has nabbed another grand title. Consultant group Resonance narrowed in on their world ranking list to bring us a list of Europe’s “most attractive metropolitan areas”. And, naturally, London has taken the top spot as the best city in Europe.

The ranking is supposed to help travellers decide “where to live, work, invest, and visit in a new global reality”. Much of the list for 2023 focuses on how European cities have navigated the global pandemic. Cities are highlighted that have seen a return to ‘normalcy’ or for being particularly flexible to a new way of doing things. With London in the top spot, the top five was rounded out by Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Zurich.

How they chose the best city in Europe

In putting together the list, there were a few criteria that had to be met. They only looked at the “principal cities of metropolitan areas with populations of more than 500,000”. When looking at specific criteria, cities were given a score for their physical place and environments, attractions and infrastructure, cultural experiences, population diversity, economic prosperity, and general popularity. And London, the “capital of capitals” came out on top.

Resonance’s write-up particularly highlighted London’s public transport developments, diversity, and the city’s attractions. London’s restaurants and museums, for example, were singled out as being the best across the list of Europe’s best cities.

Photo by Alex Segre via Shutterstock

However, some rather interesting comments in the report highlight the intended audience: predominantly the super wealthy. London was praised for strikingly high sales prices of luxury residencies. Amidst a nation-wide housing and cost of living crisis, Should you loved this information and you would like to receive details relating to assignment of contract real estate i implore you to visit the webpage. “[in] Mayfair and St James’s in December and January alone, 15 properties valued at £5 million or higher were sold—63% higher than the pre-pandemic average”. Is that cause for celebration? This writer hardly thinks so.

Other concerning areas that the report fervently gushed over were the relatively low wages, but high level of education, of London’s workforces, and the city’s low corporate taxation rates (the “lowest corporate tax rate among G7 countries”). Resonance notes that London has:

“some of the best-educated citizenry on the planet… available at a relative discount to Silicon Valley or New York—that much is confirmed by salary site Glassdoor, which estimates the salary of the average Meta software engineer in London at just over $102,000 versus $169,000 in San Francisco.”

In spite of that, we’re proud of our city. It truly is the best city in our opinion – regardless of your relative wealth.