Forget San Francisco… New York is now the world’s best tech city: Savills

Talent pool and transportation offset high real estate costs

New York City (left) and San Francisco (Credit: Pixabay)
New York City (left) and San Francisco (Credit: Pixabay)

For the first time, New York City has surpassed San Francisco to grab the No. 1 spot in the Savills Tech Cities index.

The city pulled ahead on the triennial ranking because of the availability of venture capital and its deep talent pool, Bloomberg reported.

“New York can keep generating its own talent and, I think more importantly, recruiting it from around the world,” Paul Tovstein, the report’s author, told the publication.

The Savills study graded 30 tech-heavy cities around the world on factors such as talent pool, investment opportunities, real estate and transit options over the past three years.

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However, the breakdown provided in the’ report give New York’s talent pool a lower score than San Francisco, London, Amsterdam or Boston, which make up the rest of the top five.

The numbers show that New York’s ranking was boosted by having a notably better business environment than San Francisco, and a better tech environment than London, two cities with which New York is otherwise neck-and-neck.

Austin, Texas fell to number eight in this year’s ranking after being in the top two in the first two iterations of the Savills report, in 2015 and 2017.

This latest ranking could be seen as further vindication for Amazon’s decision to locate part of its headquarters in New York City. Meanwhile, Google is also planning a major expansion in the Hudson Square neighborhood, and Apple is reportedly close to landing 600,000 square feet of office space at 55 Hudson Yards. [Bloomberg] — Kevin Sun