Dubai Ranked 5th in Economic Performance Worldwide

Which cities have the best economics in the world – New York, London, Tokyo, Bangkok or Sao Paulo? In fact, cities in the developing world are dominating this year’s economic ranking of 300 major cities globally, with Dubai landing high at fifth position, ahead of traditional top performers.

The Chinese territory Macau, which probably attracts with its casinos more gamblers than Las Vegas, outperformed economically the rest of the metropolitan areas on the planet. In fact, Chinese cities demonstrated an incredible performance over the past year, which secured them top positions at the latest 2014 Global Metro Monitor Map, a list of 300 major cities that were ranked as part of the Global Cities Initiative, a joint project of Brookings and JP Morgan. The report analyzes data from 2013 and 2014 considering the economic performance of cities, influenced by two major factors – their annualized growth rates of GDP per capita and employment.

Top 10 Fastest Growing Major Cities in the World for 2014

1. Macau, Macau/China
2. Izmir, Turkey
3. Istanbul, Turkey
4. Bursa, Turkey
5. Dubai, UAE
6. Kunming, China
7. Hangzhou, China
8. Xianmen, China
9. Ankara, Turkey
10. Fizhou, China

Macau and Dubai are the only two “developed” metropolitans not only in the top 10, but also among the 20 best-performing cities. Chinese cities are extremely well-performing economically with 27 of the 50 top performers being Chinese. Developing markets are growing faster overall, but there are huge differences between cities within a region. Bangkok in Thailand came last in the ranking as its economy is wrecked by political strife.

Dubai is ranked 5th in the list and no other metropolitan area grew faster relative to its national economy as the emirate. According to the report, business and financial services sector helped drive 4.5% growth in GDP per capita, while the United Arab Emirates has registered only 1.6% growth. Dubai also reported an improvement in employment of 4.7%, while its GDP per capita in 2014 is $24,866 and population – 3,332,500.

Cities in wealthier, developed countries lag behind, notably in Europe and North America, where economies still haven’t recovered from the Great Recession, the report says. The only European city, appearing in top 20 is Budapest (No.12), while the fastest growing Western city is London (No.26). The other top-performing European metropolitan area is Sofia in Bulgaria at No.30, while the rest of the cities on the continent couldn’t make it to top 50, or even to top 70.

Riyadh and Jeddah-Mecca in Saudi Arabia come in 25th and in 35th place, respectively.