Atlanta failed to show up in the top 25 Global Cities of the Future as ranked by fDI Intelligence, a British magazine which released its annual report on cities’ investment potential in December.
Ironically for a future-focused index, it didn’t take long for the Georgia capital to lose ground to competitors. Atlanta dropped out of the top 25 just three years after being considered the top U.S. city for foreign-investment strategy and two years after it was named No. 15 in the world, just behind Houston.
The displacement seems to come at the hands of U.S. competitors — Seattle, San Francisco, Miami and Houston were all present — as well as improved showings from cities in Asia and Europe.
Not all is lost, however: Atlanta ranked No. 9 in teh world in “business friendliness” — a metric that tracked, among other things, the number of knowledge-based companies in a city and jobs created by FDI. It also claimed No. 8 overall in the “human capital and lifestyle” category, largely thanks to its profusion of college campuses, relative affordability and available skilled labor.
The report shows Atlanta still has some ground to cover in the race to become a “top-tier global hub,” as the Metro Atlanta Chamber officials have put it. Atlanta has worked with the Brookings Institution to craft a foreign-investment strategy that it is now taking the first steps to implement.
Singapore led the pack for the third straight year, followed by London, Dublin, Hong Kong and Shanghai in the top five.
Download the full report here.
Read more from 2016: Atlanta Still Making Waves on Global Cities Indices