The Oxford Economics Global Cities Index is an annual ranking, which examines the world’s largest 1,000 urban economies and classifies them holistically by scoring the cities across five different categories.
Brisbane’s becoming more and more familiar with the global spotlight, and this will only continue as the 2032 Olympic Games draw nearer. And now, for the first time, it has cracked the top 25 in the Global Cities Index for 2025. It’s quite a leap from last year, as Brisbane climbed no less than four places. This is in large part to Brisbane’s has improvement in the environment and quality of life. It even beat out Sydney and Melbourne in the former!
The categories
Economics: Economic vitality drives city’s wealth generation, employment opportunities, access to goods and services and its potential for sustained growth and development. Oxford Economics assesses GDP size and growth, economic stability and growth among other factors to come to a conclusion about each city’s overall economic ranking.
Human Capital: Broadly speaking, human capital refers to how diverse and highly-skilled a city’s workforce and businesses, based on indicators like population growth and age, universities, corporate HQs and foreign-born population.
Quality of Life: Quality of life encapsulates the wellbeing and satisfaction of a city’s residents, examining factors like income equality, housing expenses, life expectancy and crime rate.
Environment: This category evaluates a city’s commitment to environmental sustainability and its predisposition to climate change risks, taking into account, air quality, emissions, natural disasters and anomalies in both temperature and rainfall.
Governance: Finally, Governance is measured by the country’s (not the specific city’s) institutions, political stability and civic liberties.
Brisbane in the report
The report recognised Brisbane on its environmental efforts, with a ranking of 54 out of 1,000 and for its major improvement in quality of life, from 146 last year to 87 this year.
The main reason why Brisbane scores lowest in this category out of the five, and falls below Sydney and Melbourne is the high cost of housing, especially due to the outpaced supply.
However, Brisbane came out quite well in life economics, scoring 41, despite its reliance on mining, thanks to its other areas of growth such as education, tourism and technology. Another area where we shone was human capital (46), as the city’s become a desirable immigration destination and attracts a good number of foreign-born people, on top of having a well-educated and young workforce.
Australia was well represented on the list, with seven cities making the Global Cities Index top 100 for 2025: Sydney and Melbourne both broke the top 10, with the seventh and sixth positions, respectively, Perth at 31, Canberra at 52, 54 for Adelaide, and the Gold Coast snagged the 69th spot.
Top 25 cities in 2025:
- New York
- London
- Paris
- San Jose
- Seattle
- Melbourne
- Sydney
- Boston
- Tokyo
- San Francisco
- Los Angeles
- Washington, DC
- Dublin
- Stockholm
- Seoul
- Zurich
- Oslo
- Copenhagen
- Dallas
- Toronto
- Singapore
- Munich
- Brisbane
- Chicago
- Geneva
Twenty three on the list, number one in our hearts. You can read the full Global Cities Index 2025 report here.