About Future City Index

The Future City Index (FCI) is a global, city-level benchmark designed to assess cities’ preparedness for long-term development in an increasingly technology-driven and interconnected world. Developed by the Global Talent Flow Data Hub at City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK), the FCI employs a data-driven methodology based on high-resolution, near-real-time datasets and transparent, reproducible analytics. The FCI defines a future city as an urban system that is prepared for future opportunities and challenges, identifies four strategic city clusters: Talent Hub, Connection Hub, Resilience, Future-Positioning. It provides a systematic framework for understanding how cities build talent pipelines, strengthen innovation ecosystems, position themselves in frontier technological fields, embed themselves within global networks, and enhance resilience amid uncertainty.

The Future City Index is the world’s first city-level benchmark dedicated to evaluating future competitiveness and innovation readiness. It evaluates 100 leading cities and metropolitan areas worldwide through three major pillars: Future Talent, Future Innovation, and Future Environment. These three pillars reflect the key foundations of future competitiveness: the capacity to cultivate, attract, and retain talent, the capacity to generate knowledge and technological innovation, and the capacity to provide a globally connected and resilient environment for long-term growth. Across these pillars, it examines six strategic dimensions covering talent hub, knowledge production, technological innovation, global connectivity, and urban resilience.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

• The Future City Index is the world’s first city-level benchmark dedicated to evaluating future competitiveness in education, technology, talents, and finance.
• The index evaluates 100 major cities/metropolitan areas globally through three major pillars: Future Talent, Future Innovation, and Future Environment.
• The project is supported by an international advisory committee and cross-sector collaborations involving academia, industry, public institutions, and global organizations.
• The leading future cities in 2025 are (in alphabetical order): Beijing, Boston, Hong Kong, London, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Seoul, Shanghai, and Singapore.
• Hong Kong ranks among the world’s leading future cities and demonstrates top performance in Talent Hub, Connection Hub, Resilience, and Future-Positioning.