Taking City Rankings Seriously: Engaging with Benchmarking Practices in Global Urbanism

Abstract

Who cares if our case study city has dropped a place in the so-and-so list of such-and-such cities? Whilst city rankings are soaring to popularity in media reports and everyday practitioner parlance in municipalities and the consulting world, benchmarking exercises raise more than a few eyebrows within the field of urban studies. As we argue here, whilst not condoning the superficiality of some of these indices, this is an important problem that needs rebalancing. The ‘comparative imagination’ is today not just a renewed locus of urban theory debate, but an economy in its own right at the heart of networked forms of global urbanism, both in the public and private sectors. Reviewing the global landscape of rankings, the rise of a benchmarking industry and the questions that it raises for urban theorizing, our intervention asks urban studies to take rankings seriously. We argue that they have a key place in the changing imaginary of ‘comparative gestures’ and in shaping a more ‘global’ way of worlding by cities. We advocate theorizing ‘back’ to rankings and, building on debates on ‘urban science’, we call for more proactive participation in influencing the political economy of benchmarking.