What Makes a City 'Global'?

"Aware of the enormous untapped opportunities offered through trade and global engagement, many U.S. metropolitan leaders are abandoning their path dependent focus on the U.S. market by improving their region’s global fluency," observe Brad McDearman and Joseph Parilla. "Our new report, 'The Ten Traits of Globally Fluent Metro Areas,' defines global fluency as the level of global understanding, competence, practice, and reach that a metro area exhibits to facilitate progress toward its desired economic future."

"In this report," say the authors, "we specifically isolate the 10 key traits associated with cities that have achieved global success. Many of these traits align with the key inputs to economic competitiveness: distinct specializations, infrastructure, human capital and innovation, capital investment, and good governance to name a few."

"The 10 traits below have proven to be particularly strong determinants of a metro area’s ability to succeed in global markets, manage the negative consequences of globalization, and better secure its desired economic future.  The most successful cities are those that have a long-term outlook and achieve some level of integration between many of the traits."