Toronto is world's most youthful city; Shanghai ranks 20th: survey
Berlin, New York, Dallas and Paris are among the most youth-friendly cities in the world, according to a new ranking
Toronto has been named the “most youthful city” in the world, while Shanghai ranked No 20, according to a new survey released on Monday.
The Canadian city was followed by Berlin and New York in the first YouthfulCities Index, a ranking of 25 global cities based on 80 of indicators within 16 categories of urban life, including youth employment, financial access, economic status, civic participation, food, sports, music and art.
"The index was based on 2,000 points of data, such as youth unemployment rate, percentage of youth population, number of film and music festivals, hours of operation of public transportation and 76 other indicators collected by youth in 25 cities over the course of six months," explained Robert Barnard, the co-founder of YouthfulCities, an organisation that helps youth and civic leaders to build better cities.
Toronto scored among the top five in more than half of the 16 categories and ranked No 1 for diversity.
Shanghai, which was the only Chinese city on the index, ranked fifth overall in the category of public space, sports and gaming and had the lowest youth unemployment rate among all surveyed cities.
Other youth-friendly Asian cities included Tokyo, which ranked ninth but came in first for economic status.