toronto best city

Toronto was just ranked one of the best cities in the world

Toronto has been deemed a lot of things on an international scale — recently, one of the best city brands (thanks, Drake), one of the most liveable cities and one of the safest cities.

And now, a Vancouver-based firm has named us one of the best cities in the world overall for 2020.

Taking into account unique qualitative factors like online ratings and reviews, along with basic statistics on things like like job prospects and infrastructure, Resonance Consultancy Ltd. comprehensively judges cities across the globe each year, and ranked Toronto 17th.

It is the highest-ranking Canadian city on this year's list, followed by Vancouver (41st), Montreal (45th), Calgary (48th), Ottawa (77th) andEdmonton (83rd) in the top 200.

London came in first place, with locales such as Paris, New York City, and Tokyo rounding out the top 10.

The group's methodology focused on six areas: promotion (online reviews and check-ins), place (weather, natural and built environment), product (attractions and institutions), programming (arts, culture and entertainment), people (diversity and educational attainment) and prosperity (GDP per capita and number of Global 500 headquarters).

In these categories, Toronto was ranked 123rd among 200 cities for things like place — ouch — and 52nd for programming, but compensated by ranking third overall in the world for people, 21st for product and 23rd for promotion.

By comparison, all of the cities in the top 10 ranked extremely highly in multiple sectors. London was ranked first in programming and promotion and NYC second in both. Moscow got first place in product and second in place, and Dubai second in people and third in place.

Toronto got a call-out for coming in seventh in Global 500 company offices, and Resonance called it "poised for big things" due to its economic growth, immigration and global investment.

Even the Raptors' NBA Championship win was mentioned in the report.

Though Toronto residents may be facing a few difficult realities of living in the city — like an out-of-control housing market and issues with gun violence and pedestrian safety — it's nice to see the 6ix considered one of the best in the world (even if, by the numbers, it seems that we had some mediocre rankings in key areas that were simply offset by our high diversity score).

Here are the rankings of the best cities in the world:

  1. London
  2. New York
  3. Paris
  4. Tokyo
  5. Moscow
  6. Dubai
  7. Singapore
  8. Barcelona
  9. Los Angeles
  10. Rome
  11. San Francisco
  12. Madrid
  13. Chicago
  14. Abu Dhabi
  15. Amsterdam
  16. Beijing
  17. Toronto
  18. Doha
  19. Hong Kong
  20. San Diego
Lead photo by

Patrick Tomasso


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