Post-Covid, 50% of urban residents relocate to a new city

March 7, 2023
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Fifty per cent of urban residents have already relocated to a new city post-Covid and 48 per cent are considering moving in the future, said a study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

Titled ‘Cities of Choice: Are People Happy Where They Live?’, the report draws on surveys from more than 50,000 people in 81 cities around the world to determine what makes urban residents want to move, and also what makes them want to stay.

According to the study, the pandemic had a detrimental impact on cities’ scores in 2022, with only eight cities, including Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru, to have received higher rankings than 2021. Developing cities were mapped across five parameters, with Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi scoring higher than its counterparts, the study said. The other five cities include Ho Chi Minh City, Tashkent, Cairo, Nairobi and Lagos. Among these cities, Bengaluru tops the chart followed by Mumbai, which holds the second position. Delhi stood at the third position it said.

Developing cities are characterised by their high growth rate and rapid urbanization, can be distinctly identified for their high speed of change.

“The pandemic has become a strong test of the resilience of most cities. In fact, many cities have not yet fully emerged from it,” said Hans-Paul Bürkner, BCG’s global chair emeritus, and a co-author of the report.

According to the study, knowledge and creative industries remain concentrated in “superstar cities” such as London and New York, which vie with each other and other “smaller knowledge hubs” like San Francisco Bay area and Seatle, as well as Bengaluru for technology, Los Angeles for entertainment and Nashville for music.

The other three categories include megacenters, cruiser weights and middleweights, and they are categorised on the basis of their socioeconomic profiles.

London and New York rank number one and two as the most desirable megacenters to live in, while in the cruiser weight segment (for cities with an urban population of more than 3 million people), Washington, DC, Singapore, and San Francisco emerged as the group’s leaders.

In the middle weight category, (with medium-sized cities and an urban population of less than 3 million people) Copenhagen, Vienna, and Amsterdam took the top three spots. Middleweight cities stand out for receiving high quality-of-life scores.

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