Zürich named as world’s leading smart city in list dominated by Asia and Europe

Zürich has been named as the world’s leading smart city according to the latest annual Smart City Index published by IMD business school. Asian and European cities dominate this year’s top twenty. Among them, IMD names six “super champions” because they have been continuously improving their performance since 2019: Zürich, Oslo, Singapore, Beijing, Seoul and Hong Kong.

The Index is produced by The Smart City Observatory, which is part of the IMD World Competitiveness Center. It combines data and resident survey responses to show the extent to which technology is being used by cities to address specific challenges and improve the quality of life of residents.

Across 141 cities, a total of 20,000 people were surveyed about 15 aspects of living in their cities and what issues they believe are most urgent, as well as about their feelings on technology-related issues such as use of personal data and facial recognition.

This year’s Index includes city-level data from the Global Data Lab’s Human Development Index (HDI), which measures life expectancy, expected years of schooling and the mean years of education completed, as well as the per capita income of a city’s citizens.

Zürich has been in the top three cities in the index since 2019. Life expectancy in Zürich is 84, and residents rate affordable housing, road congestion, unemployment and air quality as their main priorities.

Eighty percent say public transport is satisfactory and 71 percent think it’s easy to find information about local government decisions.

In Zürich, 60 percent of respondents said that they would be comfortable with the use of facial recognition technologies to lower crime, 66 percent said this in Oslo and 68 percent in Canberra.