City Ranking in Germany for 2017 With Some Surprize Stars in The East

After 2015 the HWWI (Hamburgische Weltwirtschafts Institut) and Private Bank Berenberg have published their City Ranking 2017.

It looks at the 30 biggest German cities using a selection of indicators to determine the dynamics and direction of their development. There are quantitative indicators like demographics and an approach to qualitative indicators like the share of "high skills" jobs in the total number of jobs.

I don't want to make this too dry to read but there are some questions regarding the value of the findings: The indicators are ranked by the diversion from the statistical average for each indicator and then compiled into a summary indicator providing the overall ranking. So 100 new jobs in a city of 500,000 has the same impact as 500 new jobs in a city of 3.5 million.

It still provides an interesting insight into the general direction of the development of cities as well as their surroundings as cities have a growing importance for the development of their region.

So here is the ranking for 2017 in comparison to 2015:

The most remarkable result has to be Dresden, the capital of Saxony going up by 6 ranks and Leipzig in the same state moving up to No.2, both Ex-East-Germany.

Both cities have been the darlings of Anglo investors about 10 years ago driving up prices for investment properties.Subsequently many have abandoned the locations due to high vacancy rates which are now disappearing because of a turn-around in the job market in the region.

The full report is available here: City Ranking 2017

City Ranking in Germany for 2017 With Some Surprize Stars in The East