Youthfull Cities Index

2 0 1 4 I N D E X H I G H L I G H T S
• Latin American and African cities score highly in civic participation
• Asian and Latin American cities score highly in environmental sustainability
• North American, European and Asian cities score highly in digital access, economic status and fnancial access
• Cities from each region appear at the top of youth employment North American and European cities dominate the overall ranking in the 2014

YouthfulCities Index, with Toronto in the top spot, followed by Berlin (2), New York City
(3), Dallas (4) and Paris (5). The top ten is rounded out with Chicago (6), followed by London (7), Los Angeles (8), Tokyo (9) and Seoul (10).

Check out the results for 2014 by clicking here

The rankings are based on a scoring index that sees Toronto (1) with 843.85 points and
Kinshasa (25) with 331.95. The 2014 YouthfulCities Index considers 25 cities and is
constructed in order to rank cities from a youth perspective and ultimately engage youth
and civic leaders to build better cities.

As well as the overall winner, the Index also identifes the cities that fnish highest in 16
individual categories. Select insights reveal that Seoul is the most environmentally
sustainable city, and Berlin and New York City are at the top in terms of youth
employment. The Index also ranks cities based on three main themes: live, work and play.
In addition to the overall, category and theme breakdowns, customized data sets are
available by request.

R A N K I N G S
USA & Canada
With Toronto fnishing 1st, New York 3rd, Dallas 4th, Chicago 6th and Los Angeles 8th,
cities in North America occupy five of the top eight spots in the overall ranking. In
individual categories, Dallas has the best regional and global connectivity, Los Angeles
scores highest in entrepreneurship and Toronto has the highest diversity ranking.
With the exception of New York, the North American cities fnish in the bottom half of both
the civic engagement and safety and mental health categories.

Latin America
Buenos Aires (11) claims top spot for Latin American cities, with Mexico City (12), Lima
(15), Sao Paulo (17) and Bogota (18) following. In the category view, Mexico City wins
civic participation, followed closely in this category by Lima and Sao Paulo. Lima claims
highest spot in the safety and mental health category, and Mexico City is ranked highest in
education access, owing largely to the considerable number of post-secondary institutions,
mixed with its relatively low cost of tuition. Buenos Aires places 5th overall in the live
theme, placing at the top of this theme for the Latin American, African and Asian regions.
With the exception of Buenos Aires, Latin American cities score in the bottom half of the
internal transportation category. All fve cities score in the bottom half of the fnancial
access and economic status categories.

Europe
Europe sees three cities in the top ten. Berlin ranks 2nd overall, only barely missing top
spot. Paris ranks 5th, followed closely by London in 7th. In terms of category rankings,
Berlin claims top spot in internal transportation, youth employment, and music and flm.
Paris wins fashion and art as well as digital access. In the theme views, Paris fnishes 1st
and London 2nd for overall live score. Berlin fnishes on top of the play theme and 2nd
overall for the work theme.
Like North America, European cities fnish in the bottom half of the civic participation
category. Elsewhere, with the exception of Berlin fnishing 5th, the European cities score in
the bottom quarter of the entrepreneurship category.

Asia
With Tokyo in 9th and Seoul in 10th, Asia has two cities in the overall top ten. Category
wise, Seoul and Manila occupy the two top spots in environmental sustainability, Mumbai
fnishes frst in fnancial access and second in education access, Tokyo scores highest in
economic access and Seoul tops food and nightlife. Given its makeup of “developed” and
“developing” cities, the Asian region has high scoring representation in all categories, with
entrepreneurship being the only category without an Asian city in the top ten.
In the theme view, Tokyo places 1st overall in work and Seoul places 5th overall in play.
Paris (1), London (2) and Berlin (6) are all at the top of the live theme.

BETTER CITIES BUILT BY YOUTHAfrica
Johannesburg (14) is the highest overall ranking African city, followed by Cairo (21),
Lagos (23), Nairobi (24) and Kinshasa (25). Like Latin American cities, African cities
generally scored well in civic participation, with Nairobi (4), Cairo (5) and Johannesburg
(7) and Lagos (10) all fnishing in the top ten of this category. Johannesburg scores well in
fashion and art (2) and diversity (6), Cairo fnishes high in youth employment (3), and
Lagos does well in entrepreneurship (4). In overall theme views, Johannesburg places 8th
in play and 10th in live.
African cities generally score poorly overall in diversity, digital access, education and
regional and global connectivity.

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