Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai on a global prosperity index

The first-ever Prosperity & Inclusion City Seal and Awards (PICSA) Index finds only three Indian cities make the cut among the world's 113 in terms of trying to create a more holistic environment for its citizens.

Highlights:

• Three Indian Cities featured in a new index of the world's 113 most economic and social inclusive cities.

• The Index scores Cities based on key factors - Income per capita or GDP, Personal Safety, Access to Education and Access to ICTs and Affordability (Housing), Environmental Quality and Access to Healthcare.

• Bangalore emerged as India's highest ranked city at number 83.

The city of Bangalore emerged as India's highest ranked at No. 83 in a new index of the world's 113 cities and how they fare in terms of economic and social inclusivity. The first-ever Prosperity & Inclusion City Seal and Awards (PICSA) Index, topped by Zurich in Switzerland, was released recently in the Basque Country capital of Bilbao in northern Spain to showcase not only the quantity of economic growth of a city but also its quality and distribution across populations.

Delhi at 101 and Mumbai at 107 are the only other Indian cities to make the index, based on key factors split across three pillars - Income per capita or GDP and Quality of Life make up Pillar 1; Personal Safety, Access to Education and Access to ICTs make up Pillar 2; and Pillar 3 is made up of Affordability (Housing), Environmental Quality and Access to Healthcare. Bangalore, also referred to as Bengaluru, scores high on the affordability scale with an overall high Pillar 3 score. Delhi also scores well on affordability but does poorly on personal safety and Mumbai is strongest on personal safety but doesn't fare too well on the overall quality of life.

The top 20 on the index are awarded a PICSA Seal as the world′s highest-ranked cities building inclusive prosperity, with Bilbao, the host city of the new rankings, at No. 20. Asier Alea Castaños, Director of Strategic Programmes at the Regional Council of Biscay, explains: “As the first ever non-commercial ranking index, PICSA provides a new measure of economic productivity that goes beyond GDP to provide a holistic account of how well people are doing in the economy and which have the populations that are most empowered to contribute to its economy and share in its benefits.

“There is increasing recognition in governments and also the private sector that success needs to be judged in new ways: factors like health, housing affordability and quality of life need to be put alongside jobs, skills and incomes when measuring prosperity,” he said.

Commissioned by Basque institutions and compiled by D&L Partners, the PICSA Index measures factors such as the affordability of housing and access to education and healthcare, besides GDP per capita. It marks the first time that the world's major cities have been ranked not just by the size and health of their economy, but for their efforts to build inclusive and prosperous environments for all its citizens.

“Cities and their territories are becoming the main engines of economic activity and prosperity, but there is growing awareness of the importance of inclusive growth to sustain the viability and competitiveness of an economy,” adds Castaños.

Zurich, as the number one, scores strongly across all measures, particularly on quality of life, work, housing, leisure, safety, and education - with the Swiss higher education system attaining an especially high score. Vienna, the Austrian capital in second place, scores close to top marks on healthcare. Copenhagen, Luxembourg and Helsinki complete the top five. The higher end of the list is dominated by European cities, with 15 of the top 20, joined by four North American cities (Ottawa in 8place; Washington DC ranked 11^th; Seattle in 14 and Boston in 16) and Taipei, which is the only Asian city to make it into the top 20 at 6th place.

Dr Bruno Lanvin, Founder and CEO at D&L Partners, said: “Without equity and inclusion, economic growth is not sustainable. Without growth, equity is about redistributing poverty. “By measuring performance of cities across different pillars of inclusive prosperity, as the PICSA Index does, policy makers can identify high performers in specific domains and establish roadmaps of best practices.”

For the index, the cities were assessed on comparable data from the main focus areas by a jury of experts and business leaders. These assessments then produced an overall score for each city's inclusive prosperity, allowing them to be ranked based on a wide range of measures.