What can Smart city rankings tell us?
The World Competitiveness Centre at IMD has recently published their 2025 Smart city index which ranks 146 cities from around the world and offers a view that balances economic and technological aspects of smart cities with the more social side of smart cities (quality of life, environment, and inclusiveness).
To understand what the rankings mean and what they are based on, in this article we are looking at a selection of cities that included in the survey and with whom the UTA interacts to discover some interesting insights.
The 15 cities included here are: Barcelona, Birmingham, Bologna, Busan City, Dublin, Geneva, Istanbul, Lausanne, Manchester, Milan, New York, Paris, Taipei City, Vancouver and Zurich.
The report ranks the cites as follows:
The page references in the table above help you locate the detailed information on each city in the full report which is available directly from the link: Download the 2025 report pdf.
The report examines the development of cities from different perspectives which are summarised as: Smart City, Technology and Structures. The thematic areas contributing most in the ranking for each city, or considered as contributing equally, are summarised in the following table:
What do people care about most in their cities?
The detailed graphics about each city show which themes citizens say are most important to them. These are displayed in the graphic below. Note that 3 of the top 4 being are directly related to developments of smart city technologies.
Three of the selected cities have moved upwards in 2025 as compared to 2024: Birmingham, Manchester and Dublin.
Why have they gained places in the ranking?
Factors contributing to their relative success are due to long term policies and activities that the cities are undertaking to drive change and include their respective communities. Some highlights from these of interest to the UTA and members are detailed in the following paragraphs.
Birmingham
Birmingham is engaged in many initiatives aimed at integrating technology to improve urban living. These range from connectivity with 5G, fibre and LoRaWan to digital twins for urban planning. Promoting green infrastructure and sustainable transport. Information about some of these use cases can be found here
Partnerships play a key role in projects as does digital inclusion and engagement, additional information about these can be found here.
The city, working in partnership with Birmingham City University through a project to make available, and improve access to, open data for the businesses, organisations and citizens of Birmingham, they consider the city as a platform, the results of this are available here Birmingham in Real time, (BiRT)
Other factors weighted in the ranking included:
- Public transport
- Lifelong learning opportunities
- Acceptance of minorities
- Internet connectivity
Dublin
Dublin is engaged in many smart city projects, among them digital transformation, sustainability and citizen engagement, information about Dublin’s smart city plans
Of special interest is the Smart Docklands Programme that pilots and supports the adoption of new and emerging technologies for cities.
Dublin is working on digital twins and how digital twins, powered by open data, can revolutionise public engagement, urban planning, and data-driven decision-making. This is supported by Dublinked – an open data platform that provides access to information and offers transparency.
Engagement in projects and pilots is key to development, another example of this is T4R Twin4Resilience
Other factors weighted in the ranking included:
- Strong governance
- Information easily accessible
- No concerns regarding corruption
- Engagement in local decision making
- Public safety
- Online reporting for needed maintenance problems
- Air pollution via app*
- Online public access to city finances has reduced corruption
*Information from ISCAPE Horizon EU project that Dublin was involved in: Living Lab guide for cities fighting air pollution
Manchester
Manchester has a history of engagement in projects and in considering the city as a complex system. In engaging in Triangulum the city along with industrial and academic partners aimed to make the Manchester corridor a low carbon district leveraging economic growth whilst reducing impacts. An exceptional feature of the project being the ICT architecture and smart city framework that was developed. More details about Manchester in the Triangulum project
More recently, Manchester has published its digital strategy: Manchester is engaged in driving its digital transition and has laid out is strategy clearly: Link to Manchester digital strategy
Engagement for communities; Manchester is the UK’s 2nd largest city and home to people speaking over 150 languages, engagement is key to their future and so joining the Horizon Europe “CommuniCity” project is a key step in encouraging collaboration.
Other factors weighted in the ranking included:
- Public safety is not a problem
- A website or App allows residents to effectively monitor air pollution
- IT skills are taught well in schools
Conclusion
As in each year it is published, the 2025 IMD Smart city index is a deeply insightful document that distils a wealth of information. This article highlights only a very few cities from the 146 ranked and links the results on which the ranking are based with projects that contribute to development and adding value for citizens. In the same manner the Urban Technology Alliance is continuously seeking to understand the needs of cities and their citizens and is looking for opportunities to engage with our members in projects and pilots and to find funding for these. By highlighting the great work being done UTA is promoting good practices. Contact us with your ideas and needs and let’s work together on the next pilots and testing future technologies.
Photo credit: Photo by drmakete lab on Unsplash
