Dubai and Abu Dhabi both ranked highest in the world for Ease of Entry in the Kearney’s yearly Global Cities Report, demonstrating their ability to attract and retain foreign talent. For the fourth year in a row, Dubai maintained its top spot in the MENA region within the Global Cities Index as well, securing 24th place worldwide.

Kearney’s yearly Global Cities Report, which includes the Global Cities Index (GCI) and Global Cities Outlook (GCO), was published this week and seeks to measure and analyse the connectivity and global character of the world’s most internationally connective and influential metropolitan areas.

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The report also highlighted how the United States and United Kingdom have “suffered major losses of foreign talent due to the stringency of their visa procedures”, thus creating opportunity for other nations to take advantage.

Dubai has consistently eased visa restrictions including around its highly-coveted 10-year golden visa in order to attract expats and businesses, as well as bolster UAE’s competitiveness in global indicators related to the ease of establishing and managing businesses for private sector companies.

Emerging economies continue to grow

The report highlighted opportunities and constraints for global talent, as it “continues to be distributed across newer rising hubs in the face of migration tensions in the West, as well as economic and climate challenges in some traditionally leading cities.”

At that, Kearney added a metric called Ease of Entry under the human capital dimension of this year’s GCI, gauging how well a city can attract and retain talent.

It added that “geopolitically and geoeconomically balanced and open cities” performed particularly well last year, which included Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Singapore, among others.

Echoing this sentiment, emerging economies in Latin America, the Middle Eastern Gulf nations, and Southeast Asia also attracted more foreign direct investment (FDI) than major economic powers.

The majority of the Ease of Entry leaders saw rank increases in population with tertiary degrees, another metric within the human capital dimension.

For example, Abu Dhabi jumped 19 places in population with tertiary degrees and Amsterdam rose by 23.

The report also highlighted how services’ contribution to GDP is especially important for emerging economic hubs – such as those in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), where countries are driving forward on ambitious economic diversification plans.

Global Cities Index rankings

New York retained the top spot in the GCI for the eighth year in a row, holding on to its global first place in business activity, and posting second-place rankings across key metrics of top global services firms and unicorn companies (privately held start-ups with valuation of at least $1 billion).

London, Paris and Tokyo were followed by Singapore which made the top 5 for the very first time.

Dubai was ranked at 24, a spot down from last year’s 23. It was ranked as a better city to live, work and prosper than Miami, Vienna, Milan and Montreal.

Future outlook

Cities that continue to prioritise security, stability, health, and environment this year were slated to remain in a strong position to withstand continued economic shocks, added the report.

Middle Eastern Gulf cities have been able to keep real interest rates relatively low, it added.

This has not only kept the cost of capital moderate but they have been able to “advance ambitious agendas to diversify their economies and stimulate their private markets.”

Dubai has moved up 10 spots in innovation, Makkah (up eight spots) and Muscat (up 11 spots) and have all seen increases in the private investments metric under the innovation category.

The report also called for cities to be regenerative as well as climate conscious.