SF was one of only two major U.S. cities to make the list — and the only one on the West Coast.
2020 (and the earlier half of 2021) saw longwinded think pieces on the SF Bay Area’s mass exodus — a hella hyped hyperlocal trend that took off amid pandemic-spurred shelter-in-place orders and general unease — take over our social media feeds. Silicon Valley, however, appeared to remain unaffected by residential zip code changes observed elsewhere in the region.
But, again: There’s so much to love, to appreciate, to find gratitude in living in this magical slice of Northern California.
There are a plethora of iconic staircases to climb; you’d be hard-pressed to find a more queer-friendly metro anywhere… on the planet; the global cuisine available right outside our studio apartments is unmatched in both its accessibility and density; every time Karl The Fog envelops the Golden Gate Bridge, bodies beneath wash with a wave of dopamine; etc., etc., etc.
Those of us who moved to SF from elsewhere — and continue choosing to live here, defiant in not being uprooted by the city’s high cost of living — aren’t unmoored by the twenty-somethings around us making $120,000 a year and complaining about being cash-strapped.
(Though don’t get us wrong: Ephemeral desires to push said financially affluent and unappreciative bipeds into fast-moving traffic do overtake our limbic systems from time to time.)
It only takes one evening stroll through the Panhandle or car-free Ocean Beach or excursions around the Mission District to understand, on a cellular level, why San Francisco is widely considered one of the most gorgeous places in the world.
According to a recent report from Resonance Consultancy, San Francisco is also already one of the best cities in the world.
San Francisco’s awe-striking aura isn’t up for assumption. The Resonance Consultancy just released its 2024 ranking of the World’s Best Cities — and San Francisco slotted into the #7 spot out of 270-plus global cities analyzed. (New York City, which is ranked ahead of SF at #3 on the list, is the only other American city to make the list, for a lil’ bit of context.)
“Despite San Francisco’s meticulously documented challenges, job opportunities, and infrastructure buildout pave the way as the world continues to rush in like it always has,” reads an excerpt about SF by the marketing consulting firm that’s headquartered in Vancouver, adding “the Bay Area remains the number one place for start-up innovation, powered by venture capital kept interested in the city’s famed ‘ecosystem’ — for talent, for research and universities.”
The 2024 World’s Best Cities rankings by Resonance Consultancy benchmarked the overall performance of more than 270 principal cities in metropolitan areas with populations of more than one million; this was done by reviewing a wide variety of measures to identify the top 100 places to live, visit and invest on the planet; among the indexes included “Prosperity,”
The overall Best Cities rankings are determined by analyzing the performance of each city for a wide range of factors that have historically shown positive correlations with attracting employment, investment, and/or visitors to cities. Resonance groups these 24 metrics into a city’s “Livability,” “Lovability,” and “Prosperity.”
The short blurb nodded at SF’s new wave of pedestrian-friendly bikeways and car-free corridors: “Local leaders are rolling out the most daring bike and pedestrian infrastructure in America and the protected bike network now boasts 464 miles of bikeways, including 50 miles of new car-free/car-light streets in the past year alone.”
While sure, we don’t need a Canada-based agency to tell us just how amazing San Francisco is, it’s nice to see some international love for this slice of Northern California we all so fondly cherish.
