Although London maintained its #1 position for the 8th consecutive year, results show that the city’s comprehensive power has fallen. While its score continued to rise following the 2016 EU membership referendum, this year its score in Economy’s World’s Top 500 Companies fell, perhaps showing the effects of turmoil surrounding Brexit negotiations. However, the city holds a top 5 position in 12 of the 16 Cultural Interaction indicators, still displaying its superior strength.

New York maintains a top position in Economy and Research & Development by obtaining results with high scores in GDP, Stock Market Capitalization, and Startup Environment. The city also obtained strong results in Cultural Interaction (#2) and Accessibility (#3). However in Cultural Interaction, Number of Foreign Residents has shown a decreasing trend for the past 3 years, indicating an outflow of foreign population to other domestic and international cities.

Similar to the top 2 cities, Tokyo also saw a decrease in comprehensive score, though it maintained its #3 position. The gap between the #4 Paris and Tokyo narrowed once again, as Paris’ drop in score was relatively small in comparison. Tokyo’s status as a balanced city is continuing to gradually strengthen, as it lacks both exceedingly strong and extremely weak functions despite being a comprehensively powerful city overall.