New York Replaces Tokyo as the Most Innovative City in the World

New York, November 11, 2019:

New York city in the United States of America took first place in a list of the world’s most innovative cities on Tuesday. The US performed strongly for its embrace of smart technology and start-ups.

Tokyo, last year’s winner, and London, took second and third places in the Innovation Cities Index, with the US cities of Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston also making the top 10 of the list.

Christopher Hire, director of commercial data provider 2thinknow, which publishes the annual ranking of 500 cities, said, "What really surprised us this year was a United States bounce-back at the top of the league".

Chicago entered the top five for the first time since the poll began in 2007, due to a burgeoning number of start-ups and top-ranked universities, the index found.

One of the big losers was the San Francisco Bay area—home of the Silicon Valley headquarters of tech giants like Apple, Facebook and Google—which fell six places to ninth spot due to “tech controversies, homelessness and privacy issues”, it said.

Several Chinese cities made gains, including Beijing and Shanghai, in a sign of rising global power, 2thinknow said.

“Our Index is designed to measure innovation conditions, and often predicts rising cities before other rankings,” said Hire.

“It is up to the city whether they can keep on top of the latest trends, and exploit their innovation potential.”

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