London, Paris, New York, Moscow, and Dubai – these are the highest-ranked cities in the annual Best Cities ranking prepared by Resonance Consultancy. Warsaw took 69th place.

Unlike other best-of lists, Resonance's annual ranking considers a city's diversity, cultural programming, as well as its response to COVID and ability to rebound.

“Our goal here was not to just create an index for tourism or just for business or just for livability. It was really to provide and create a ranking that took a holistic view of the city. When we say 'best cities,' it’s not just the best city to live in, it’s not just the best city to work or best city to visit. It’s taking a cross-section of all those factors,” Chris Fair, president, and CEO of Resonance Consultancy, said.

He explained that many of the factors are related to the experiential quality of the city - things like culture, restaurants, nightlife, shopping, and sports. There are no core statistics for those kinds of factors. What really distinguishes Resonance's rankings is mining user-generated data in channels like TripAdvisor and Yelp to measure those experiential factors. 

What caused the relatively distant position of Warsaw?

“With the addition of high-profile architectural projects – including the upcoming rebuild of the Saski Palace, an iconic 17th-century building destroyed by the Nazis in World War II – plus new museums and a couple of Michelin-starred restaurants under its belt, the Polish capital is finally coming into its own as a tourist destination. It’s also an affordable one at that, where real estate and travel often costs half of what it does in most Western European capitals. But whereas the city was incredibly safe two years ago, that ranking plunged by a horrifying 76 spots in the past year, from #21 to #97,” the report reads.

(WBJ)