Sydney and Melbourne top list of world's most reputable cities

Inga Ting, smh.com.au [graphs in article not included below]

Sydney has again ranked among the top three most reputable cities in the world. Photo: Rob Homer

Sydney and Melbourne have topped this year's index of the world's 100 most reputable cities, ranked by advanced economy, environmental appeal and effective government.

The 2015 City Reptrak Report, compiled by Boston-based consultancy Reputation Institute, is the fifth annual report showing where people in G8 countries most want to visit, work and invest.

Melbourne's score soared by 9.9 per cent this year, propelling it from 21st place last year.

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Sydney has scored far more consistently than Melbourne over the five years the report has been produced. In 2011, the inaugural survey ranked Melbourne 28th out of 100 cities. Sydney has ranked among the top three cities every year. ... 

[T]he fortunes of most of the cities in this year's top 10 fluctuate significantly from year to year. Only Sydney, Vienna and Venice have consistently made the top 10.

This year's survey asked more than 19,000 people to rank 100 cities on three broad measures: environment (including beauty and well-known personalities), government (including safety, leadership, transport and communications) and economy (including stability and growth, technology, products and services).

Melbourne ranked better than Sydney for effective government and advanced economy but finished behind Sydney for environmental appeal.

Well-known cities tend to have better reputations, the report found, with cities such as Paris and London ranking strongly for both, and places such as Baghdad and Tehran ranking poorly on both.

However, Australia's lesser-known cities – Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and the Gold Coast – punched well above their weight on reputation, achieving between 65 and 70 for reputation despite scoring 10 per cent or lower on familiarity.

However, Brisbane and Perth both fell in this year's reputation rankings, with Brisbane's score falling by 6.9 per cent and Perth's by 3.6 per cent.

Fifteen of the top 20 cities are European. Canada had one city in the top 20 (Vancouver) and Japan had two (Tokyo and Osaka).

San Francisco is the highest-ranked US city, at 24th. New York ranked 31st.

Asian cities showed the most dramatic gains in reputation, although they still scored relatively poorly, the report found.

Seoul improved the most, recording a 15 per cent increase over its 2014 score. Karachi had the second-biggest increase in the region (14 per cent).

Places with good reputation welcome more tourists, increase exports, attract greater foreign investment and talent and improve their public diplomacy, according to the report.