Sofia Song’s job might just be the most enviable in urbanism. She’s the Global Cities Research Lead at the Gensler Research Institute, and for the past five years, she’s been building one of the world’s most comprehensive databases on the human experience of cities. Not GDP rankings or glossy branding campaigns. but how people actually feel about the places they live.
I love it because it means we can talk about some of the best cities in the world without it being all the usual suspects.
It began in the anxious early days of the pandemic - New York, London, Singapore and San Francisco, locked down, cities quiet - has evolved into a global project. The Gensler City Pulse study now spans 65 cities, 125 central business districts, 30 countries and 21 languages, with over 100,000 responses from residents demographically balanced by age, gender, education and income. It’s survey based, yes, but not in the generic sense. It asks the fundamental, rarely quantified question: what makes you want to move to a city and what makes you stay?
It’s a deceptively simple premise, but Sofia frames it with refreshing clarity:
“Cities cannot rely on natural birth rate. What they rely on is having people come to their city, and more importantly, having people stay.”
Behind all the policy papers and investment summits is the reality that cities are in competition for talent, for energy and for the money from future taxpayers. That competition isn’t just about attracting residents, but once you’ve got them, it’s important to hold onto them.
We Move for Practicality, We Stay for Feeling
The findings of the latest City Pulse report, which focused on the concept of magnetic cities, are both intuitive, in some ways a bit obvious, while also being a wee bit radical. The decision to move to a city is driven by practicality; affordability, access to jobs, safety, healthcare etc. But the decision to stay is emotional.
“It’s like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,” Sofia says. “You need your basic needs met … security, safety, housing … before you can build emotional connection. But it’s that emotional layer that keeps people rooted.”
It makes sense, for you move to a city because you can afford to live there and earn a decent wage. You stay because you feel something for it. You create memories, you develop belonging. And increasingly that sense of belonging comes not from infrastructure alone, but from the emotional infrastructure cities either nurture, or in many cases, neglect.
I like how Sofia is recognising this is something actually hard to measure too as she states; “What draws people to cities is pragmatic. What gets people to stay are the intangibles.”
Chairs, Buses and Bryant Park
One of Sofia’s favourite examples is Bryant Park, a space she remembers from childhood in 1970s New York as a “walled-off drug den” … though I’ve heard others call it worse. It was reclaimed in the ’90s, but not so much through brute force or architectural grandstanding, though a clean up did help. The genius move was also adding unchained, movable chairs.
“When you can move a chair, you have agency. And when you have agency in a public space, it increases attachment to that place.”
This isn’t just about seating, promise, but the message that such moves send. It’s about trust, and the subtle cues cities give their residents about whether they’re welcome, empowered or simply tolerated. A subway system with real-time updates makes people feel in control. A park with flexible seating invites them to shape the space. A tramline, unlike a bus route, signals permanence.
“A train means there’s one coming,” she says. “It tells you: we’ve made a commitment to this place. A bus might not show up at all.”
Even the best city data in the world doesn’t matter if people don’t feel like they’re being taken seriously. Emotional infrastructure matters because, in a world of mobility and remote work, residents aren’t trapped anymore. They have far more real, as well as perceived, options.
The Places That Surprised
One of the most interesting aspects of the City Pulse data isn’t just which cities perform well, but the ones that might surprise some. Cities like Monterrey, Mexico and Cairo ranked highly in resident satisfaction, despite basically never appearing on the wish lists or surveys of most urbanism types.
For Monterrey, the story is economic as the city has benefitted massively from near-shoring trends, drawing investment, jobs and talent at a scale that quickly improved quality of life. Add this to good local universities and developing more higher skilled opportunities and you’re onto something sustainable.
Cairo ranked unexpectedly high in Gensler’s City Pulse survey, which might leave a few urbanists puzzled. It’s a city often criticised for its congestion, pollution and chaotic infrastructure. So how did it outperform cities with far slicker reputations?
Sofia is quick to clarify it’s not that Cairo suddenly became a walkable urban utopia, it’s that global survey data always carries cultural nuance. “In any global survey, you have to account for cultural bias. Some countries tend to respond more positively, others more critically,” she explained.
Japan and France, for example, lean negative; China, India and Egypt skew more optimistic. So Cairo’s strong scores likely reflect a cultural tendency toward positive self-assessment, rather than a sweeping endorsement of its urban form.
There’s also cultural difference, what people value in a city can vary widely. In Tokyo, crowded trains might be rated poorly despite being impeccably on time. In New York, a grimy subway might be considered efficient simply because it works. Context matters.
That’s why Gensler applies higher order analysis to move past raw sentiment and uncover deeper drivers of attachment.
The Toronto Problem
I can’t really do many Challenger Cities episode without needling Toronto. It scores poorly in the survey, and deservedly so. Toronto behaves like a brand that is always sending out offers, chasing new customers, with a flashy skyline, international students, global conferences, while forgetting the ones who actually live there … always being at least an hour to go anywhere even within the city.
Sofia, ever the diplomat, points to affordability and a housing market distorted by foreign capital. But I think there’s a deeper structural malaise. Toronto behaves like a brand chasing new customers, forgetting the ones it already has. It has a story for the world, but not for the people who already live there. It’s good at attraction, but poor at retention.
“Some cities focus too much on bringing companies and people in, and not enough on creating meaningful experiences for the people already living there,” Sofia says. “If they don’t feel connected, they’ll leave.”
Toronto isn’t alone though, for cities across North America suffer from infrastructure denial as a reluctance to admit the system doesn’t work, and a fear of making visible, disruptive changes. Sofia brings up Los Angeles, where commutes are soul-crushing, and transit options are inadequate for a city its size. But at least in LA, there’s a growing awareness. In Toronto, denial still feels like the dominant civic mood.
Second Cities, First Warnings
If the pandemic was a stress test for global cities, it was a golden opportunity for their smaller siblings.
Places like Austin, Tampa and Raleigh surged in popularity during the pandemic. They were marketed, sometimes unintentionally, as escape valves, offering lower housing costs, more space and just enough culture to feel interesting without the headaches of a full blown metropolis.
But those same cities are now contending with the consequences of their appeal. “A lot of second-tier cities that blew up during the pandemic became victims of their own success,” Sofia says. “They grew too fast. Infrastructure couldn’t keep up. The very thing that made them attractive began to erode.”
It’s a familiar story as the highway that was once a benefit becomes a bottleneck. Housing, once affordable, is now increasingly out of reach, squeezing the cultural industries because there’s pressure on making the new higher rents. The vibe, the thing that actually drew people in, starts to flatten out. Local charm gets replaced by identikit condos and Walgreensified streetscapes. The people who built the city’s identity get priced out by the people who showed up for the identity.
Austin, to its credit, seems to have recognised the danger. It’s responded quickly, investing in transit, greenlighting more housing than any of its peers, and trying to preserve the quirky culture that earned it the tagline Keep Austin Weird. Others have been slower, assuming that what worked in 2020 would work indefinitely.
But cities can’t freeze their success. They have to grow into it. That requires something few second-tier cities have mastered; the art of knowing when you’ve tipped from magnetic to overwhelming.
The Climate is Already a Push Factor
You’d be hard-pressed to find a city that doesn’t mention “resilience” in its press releases. But Gensler’s research puts hard data behind what many policymakers still treat as a soft concern as climate vulnerability is making people want to leave.
The City Pulse team incorporated third-party indices like Notre Dame’s ND-GAIN, which blends climate risk and preparedness to gauge how exposed a city really is. The findings were unambiguous as people are more likely to want to leave cities where the climate feels unpredictable, dangerous or outright hostile.
“We found a clear relationship between climate vulnerability and the desire to move,” Sofia explains. “It’s not theoretical anymore. People are responding with their feet.”
While climate change is a universal concern, its effects are deeply local. For some, it’s wildfires creeping into suburbs. For others, it’s catastrophic flooding or oppressive heat.
In Asia, Sofia notes, the awareness seems more acute, perhaps because the threats feel more immediate. A story I heard recently recounted a compelling example from southern China when a typhoon hit, the first systems to shut down were the ferries, the legacy railways, the older infrastructure. The last thing still functioning was the more modern high-speed rail network, elevated, modern and climate-resilient by design.
“That kind of foresight is rare,” she says. “And that’s what cities need more of. Not just reacting, but preparing.”
There’s something profound in that story for we can’t stop the storm, but we can design for dignity in the hours before and after it hits.
The Young Don’t Want Boring
There’s something in the report and what we talked about that feels like it should be in every Mayor’s daily briefing.
“The biggest predictor of people staying in their cities was they don’t feel bored. It’s having excitement in the city... they’re actually engaged, they’re stimulated, they’re excited about what’s going on in their city.”
Not affordability, not job prospects, or even housing. Boredom might not be the most easily measurable thing, or most base need to solve for, but if you want to keep the best people in your city, don’t let them find it dull being there.
It’s especially true for younger residents, who Sofia describes as “the beta testers of cities.” They’re the ones trying things first like bars, gyms, neighbourhoods, side hustles, political protests, book clubs. If they leave, it’s not because they didn’t make money. It’s because the city gave them nothing to respond to.“If a city isn’t exciting, if there’s no cultural activity, no sense of stimulation, then they leave. They want to feel engaged. They want a reason to stay up late or get up early.”
It’s not just a play thing, but a life thing. Young people aren’t looking for perfection, they are looking for a sense that they’re part of something in motion. Cities that fail to offer that dynamism become the staging grounds for departures.
Belonging is the Ultimate Infrastructure
When I asked Sofia my usual magic wand closing question, she had three things. Two sensible, one wonderful.
“Three things.
One: Affordable housing.
Two: A 100-year climate strategy.
Three: A public realm that makes strangers feel like neighbours.”
That third one is where the soul of the city sits, and she’s on the money, the real measure of a city’s success isn’t whether it functions (because broadly they do), it’s whether it connects (and the difference there is massively broader).
Too many cities are functional and lonely. They work on paper but not in people’s hearts. They have infrastructure, but no intimacy. Density, but no delight.
“You can be surrounded by people and still feel alone,” Sofia says. “During the pandemic, something shifted. We saw strangers helping strangers. There was this glimpse of a city where people noticed each other again.”
That’s what great public space does as it lets people see one another. Not just as cohabitants in the built environment, but as participants in a shared story.
The public realm isn’t a nice to have, but the glue that holds all the clever engineering and beautiful architecture together.
The Real Value of City Pulse
There are lots of city rankings in the world. The Economist publishes one. So do consultancy firms, think tanks and data startups. They all tend to reach the same conclusion: Vienna is perfect, Melbourne is delightful and Canada has three cities in the top ten even though most Canadians can’t afford to live in them. The top 10 tend to be quite nice, just lacking any rizz.
Gensler’s City Pulse is trying to understand cities, rather than rank them. “What we’ve built is a way to measure the lived experience,” Sofia says. “It’s not about how cities look on paper. It’s how people feel day-to-day. What makes them stay. What drives them away. And where the real opportunities are.”
And in five years, she hopes that dataset becomes something even bigger, more cities, deeper time series, more tools to turn insights into action. Learning over winning.
What I hope is a good take away for “Challengers” is that the cities people stay in are rarely the ones with the biggest plans or the flashiest branding. They’re the ones where people feel seen, heard, trusted, welcomed, loved. The ones where a chair you can move says more about civic values than any skyline.
Cities aren’t competing with each other to be the best on a ranking, they’re competing to matter far more subjectively. In an age of footloose workers and climate migration, that’s far more emotional.
To being Challengers.
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