InvestChile Blog

World ranking of smart cities: Santiago leads the region

Written by InvestChile | May,16,2019

According to the study, the Chilean capital had a better evolution and a positive performance on urban planning and the environment.

For the past six years, the Center for Globalization and Strategy of the IESE Business School has published a ranking of the world’s smart cities. It is dominated by European cities but, in its latest version, includes 26 Latin American cities, and Santiago is one of them.

Positions in the ranking are assigned on the basis of 96 indicators across nine main dimensions: human capital, social cohesion, the economy, governance, the environment, mobility and transportation, urban planning, international outreach and technology.

In the sixth version of the study, Santiago ranks as Latin America’s “smartest” city, taking 66th place internationally. In the region, it is followed by Buenos Aires (Argentina) in 77th place and Montevideo (Uruguay) in 92nd.

In 2017, Santiago ranked 73rd, behind Buenos Aires in 65th place, but, last year, moved ahead of the Argentine capital. According to the study, this reflected its better evolution and positive performance on urban planning and the environment, while Buenos Aires dropped on economic performance.

The only Latin American city with a relatively high level of development was Santiago; five other cities, including Bogotá (Colombia), Panama City and San José (Costa Rica), had a medium level of development while 19 cities showed a low performance.

The country with the largest number of cities in the IESE’s Index of Smart Cities 2019 is Brazil where Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, Sao Paulo, Curitiba, Salvador and Belo Horizonte qualified. 

With 26 cities, Latin America accounted for 11% of all the cities evaluated, but most ranked below the 100th position.

According to the IESE researchers, this reflects, among other factors, the fact that Latin America is one of the regions with the greatest urban concentration on the planet, so the challenges facing its cities are increasingly global.

London has headed the ranking for the past two years, followed by New York whose position remained unchanged.

Would you like to know more about Chile as a place to live and do business? Read this article.

Source: Diario Financiero