This year, Switzerland is once again represented by several cities and cantons in the various top 10 rankings of the European Cities and Regions of the Future 2024. These rankings are used by fDi Intelligence – a British investment portal belonging to the Financial Times – to assess the most attractive locations in Europe for direct investment. The data was collected for a total of 330 cities and 141 regions in five sub-categories: economic potential, human capital and quality of life, economic efficiency, transport links and business friendliness.
As in the previous year, Zug won the micro-cities category, just ahead of the Irish cities of Limerick and Galway. In the human capital and quality of life sub-category, Lugano is in 5th place.
In the group of medium-sized cities, Zurich now takes second place after last year’s first place, behind Wroclaw in Poland and ahead of Vilnius in Lithuania. The report particularly emphasises Zurich’s well-educated workforce and its concentration of medtech companies. Zurich has the greatest economic potential in its group and has recorded an average of 33 new relocation projects over the past five years.
Among the small cities, Geneva retains its importance as one of the world’s most important diplomatic and financial hubs and is ranked third, according to the report, while Basel is now ranked fifth, up from first place last year.
Among the medium-sized European regions, the canton of Zurich is ranked 7th, while the canton of Geneva is ranked 8th and the canton of Zug 9th among the small regions.
In addition, the Greater Zurich Area(GZA) and the Basel Area were also successful with 3rd and 10th place respectively. They were recognised for their fDi strategy, which they use to attract internationally expanding companies to the Swiss region.