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Smart City Index

What makes a city the most livable, in 2025?

Smart City Index

What makes a city the most livable, in 2025?

Why measure cities’ smartness?

IMD produces a yearly Smart City Index offering a balanced focus on economic and technological aspects of smart cities on the one hand, and “humane dimensions” of smart cities (quality of life, environment, and inclusiveness) on the other.

In this sixth edition, survey answers to the question “Is finding housing with rent equal to or less than 30% of the average monthly salary a problem in your city?” shape the dialogue. The new cities added this year are: AlUla in Saudi Arabia, Astana in Kazakhstan, Caracas in Venezuela, Kuwait City in Kuwait, Manama in Bahrain, and San Juan in Puerto Rico – bringing this year’s total to 146. 

Meet the team
 - IMD Business School
Professor Arturo Bris
Professor of Finance, Director of IMD World Competitiveness Center

An author and in-demand speaker, Arturo Bris (www.arturobris.org) ranks among the top 100 most read finance academics in the world. His research and consulting activities focus on the international aspects of financial regulation, and in particular on the effects of bankruptcy, short sales, insider trading, and merger laws.

 - IMD Business School
Christos Cabolis
Chief Economist of IMD World Competitiveness Center

Christos Cabolis leads IMD’s Smart City research.  is Adjunct Professor of Economics and Competitiveness. He is Chief Economist and Head of Operations at the IMD World Competitiveness Center. Cabolis holds a BA from the University of Athens, an MA from California State University, Long Beach, and a PhD in economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

 - IMD Business School
World’s smartest cities strike very different balances to satisfy citizen needs
The IMD ranking reveals that lack of affordable housing is, however, a struggle they share

Making housing more affordable is the top priority for most of the respondents of the survey generating the 2025 IMD Smart City Index 

Released today, the Index, now in its sixth year, is the tool that the World Competitiveness Center (WCC) – IMD’s competitiveness powerhouse – uses to assess how cities balance various dimensions. These range from jobs and housing to environmental concerns and inclusiveness.  

In 110 global cities out of 146 measured, affordable housing was earmarked as a priority by at least half of the survey respondents. 

Browse the full report

“As we move into a new geopolitical order, cities will play a much more important role than countries. We have moved into a fragmented economy and major urban areas will be the center of all economic activities in the coming years.”

Arturo Bris Director, IMD World Competitiveness Center

Cities in a Time of Global Emergencies

Edited by Professor Arturo Bris, Christos Cabolis, Chan Heng Chee, and Bruno Lanvin.

This is the second volume of smart cities case studies published as a companion to the IMD-SUTD Smart City Index. It follows the award-winning ‘Sixteen Shades of Smart’, released in 2019.

The ten case studies contained in ‘Cities in a time of global emergencies’ describe and analyze the experience and strategies of smart cities from Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Some of them are just starting their smart city journey, while others have already gone through several versions of their strategy to respond to their citizens’ needs by becoming even smarter. The comparison of the approaches taken is a source of factual knowledge about the possible future of smart cities and casts a new light on what their options might be in the face of today’s and tomorrow’s emergencies.

Sixteen shades of Smart: How cities can shape their own future

Smart cities are a fast-growing species, and a fascinating field for new experiments in a number of critical areas, ranging from urban planning, sustainable energy, and transport strategies to social integration and talent attraction, to name a few. As leaders and citizens around the world continue to assess, design, implement and improve on ways to create better cities, they often find themselves confronted with a multitude of decisions and a wide range of partial solutions to specific problems such as traffic congestion, waste management and crime.

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It includes 16 case studies, produced by the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities at SUTD (covering Asia and the Pacific) and the IMD World Competitiveness Center (covering other parts of the world). Producing these studies has yielded important lessons about how to enhance the value and uniqueness of our smart city index, as well as precious insights on how our two institutions can work together in a very synergistic way to produce unique insights.

Sixteen shades of Smart has been awarded the bronze medal in the Business Intelligence/Innovation category at the Axiom Book Awards.