European Cities Monitor 2009
The latest Cushman & Wakefield (C&W) European Cities Monitor 2009 has not thrown up any big surprise. For the last 20 years, London, Paris and Frankfurt have remained the top three cities for business in Europe. This year London extended its lead slightly on Paris, although the top two cities are still comfortably ahead of the nearest challengers. The top five cities also remained the same overall, but Barcelona edged above Brussels into fourth place.
Birmingham was the biggest mover this year, rising up the ranking by seven places to 14th place followed by Hamburg (17th to 12th) and Leeds (28th to 24th). The cities that fell in the overall ranking included Budapest (22nd to 26th), Zurich (10th to 13th), Düsseldorf (12th to 15th) and Dublin (15th to 18th). The top 5 cities doing the most to improve themselves were Barcelona, London, Berlin, Madrid and Prague.
The top four factors in deciding where to locate also did not change although the order changed slightly. Easy access to markets, customers or clients replaced availability of quality staff as the most important factor. Followed by quality of telecommunications which edged further ahead of transport links with other cities and internationally. Value for money of office space is increasingly significant for occupiers, with 34% of companies regarding the factor as the most important, up from 26%.
| CITY RANKINGS | |
| Best cities in terms of | Top 5 Cities |
| Easy access to markets | London, Paris, Frankfurt, Milan and Brussels |
| Qualified staff | London, Paris, Frankfurt, Munich and (Amsterdam and Birmingham) |
| Quality of telecommunications | London, Paris, Frankfurt, Stockholm and Munich |
| External transport links | London, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Brussels |
| Cost of staff | Bucharest, Istanbul, Budapest, Lisbon and Warsaw |
| Value for money of office space | Birmingham, Leeds, Warsaw, Lisbon and Lyon |
| Climate governments create | Dublin, Geneva, Warsaw, London and Bucharest |
| Availability of office space | Berlin, London, Madrid, Barcelona and Birmingham |
| Languages spoken | London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Geneva and Stockholm |
| Internal transport | London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid and Stockholm |
| Quality of life for employees | Barcelona, Geneva, Munich, Oslo and Madrid |
| Freedom from pollution | Geneva, Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki and Zurich |
| Where do companies want to expand within the next 5 years | |
| Top 10 cities in Europe | Warsaw, Moscow, Bucharest, Paris, London, Budapest, Brussels, Istanbul, Prague and Vienna |
| Top 10 cities outside Europe | New York, Shanghai, Sao Paulo, Mumbai, Buenos Aires, New Delhi, Beijing, Mexico City, Cairo and Hong Kong |
Cushman & Wakefield (C&W) has been conducting this survey since 1990. The survey provides an overview of the perceptions that corporate occupiers have about cities across Europe and their relative attractiveness. The underlying data is researched independently for C&W by TNS BMRB and 500 senior executives from leading European companies.
