Doha’s rise has also been primarily driven by the return of movement to pre-pandemic levels of freedom of international travel, attracting large volumes of migrant talent and tourism, with the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 welcoming over 1.4mln visitors.

Doha, Qatar: Qatar’s capital, Doha, has recorded a significant rise in Kearney’s 2023 Global Cities Index powered by Doha’s substantial improvements in the Human Capital dimension, moving up the global rankings by 13 places.

Doha’s rise has also been primarily driven by the return of movement to pre-pandemic levels of freedom of international travel, attracting large volumes of migrant talent and tourism, with the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 welcoming over 1.4 million visitors.

The city also saw a six-point jump in its Business Activity ranking, continuing to reap the benefits of open economic policies introduced in recent years, ushering it into the top 50.

The renowned index by Kearney, a leading global management consulting firm, highlights the beginning of a shake-up in the traditional hierarchy of global cities, with emerging hubs — including Doha — experiencing incredible gains, contributing to a new distributed geography of opportunity. Doha’s meteoric rise globally as a sports, tourism and events hub has seen it climb into the top 50 for the first time and rank second regionally.

The Global Cities Index (GCI) seeks to quantify the extent to which a city can attract, retain, and generate global flows of capital, people, and ideas. Cities are measured against five key dimensions: human capital, information exchange, cultural experience, political engagement, and business activity.

The latest milestone complements Qatar’s growing global stature. Recently, Qatar was ranked the most peaceful country in the Middle East and North Africa, according to the 17th edition of the Global Peace Index (GPI) 2023.

The ranking also placed Qatar 21st in the world, recording a jump of two spots this year.

“Qatar’s commitment to realising its Vision 2030 has led its capital city to begin closing in on more established global city leaders. An increased focus on improving the investment environment, building upon the country’s decades-long undertaking to develop a world-class educational system and relative ease of access to global talent, has helped Doha to prove its resilience amid challenging global conditions,” commented Rudolph Lohmeyer, Kearney Partner, National Transformation Institute.

In April, Doha also made the top 10 safest global tourist destinations in a UK security training outfit ‘Get Licensed’ survey.

While the GCI captures the current state of global city leadership; the Global Cities Outlook (GCO) aims to identify cities most likely to achieve global prominence. Here, the emergence of a distributed geography of opportunity was also present.

European cities maintained a strong presence in the top 30 rankings, while Asia’s global hubs, including Seoul, Osaka, and Chennai, made significant strides.

In the US, second-tier metropolitan areas performed particularly well, having successfully attracted talent and capital over the turbulent past few years.

Source: Zaway