Smart City Index 2023

IMD Smart City Index 2023 Introduction: A More Precise, Relevant and Impactful Smart City Index

The SCI’s value rests greatly on its ability to generate time series, and this is where citizens and decision makers can track the evolution of their city’s performance over time, and compare it with that of other cities around the world. It follows that deciding to change an index’s methodology isn’t easy and often comes at the cost of breaking the continuity necessary to build such a series. We are proud to announce that in the case of the SCI, we have been able to not only improve the methodology but also to preserve our users’ ability to work on time series. We did so by ‘building back’ the data and rankings that would have been those of the cities covered if the new methodology had been applied at the time. This means that the rankings of the SCI 2023 should not be compared to those published in previous SCI reports as they are the result of different approaches. However, comparisons across time can be made and used with recourse to the tables included in this report that reflect the 2019-2023 rankings of the cities covered using the most recent methodology. See pages 39-40 of this report.

Against the background of these three significant changes, what key messages emerge from this revamped 2023 Index and Report? They can be summarized as follows:

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The global landscape of smart cities is changing, and lessons can be learned from the experience of “SCI champions”–the top 20. Globally, a new world is shaping up, and changes at the city level are a precious indicator of what the future may hold.

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IMD Smart City Index 2023

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