Manhattan’s Upper Fifth Avenue retail corridor remains the most expensive retail market in the world, with rents almost 50 percent higher than the second-priciest shopping district in the world, Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay.

Rents On Fifth Avenue between 49th and 60th streets reached $3,500 per square foot through the first half of this year – up 3.6 percent from a year earlier and 46 percent above $2,399 per square foot in Causeway Bay, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s “Main Streets Across the World” report.

Upper Fifth Avenue, the most desirable retail corridor in Manhattan, retains its status as the world’s most expensive market thanks to a strong tourism industry that helps retail tenants attract customers, the report said.

Luxury retailer Bulgari’s new 15-year lease at Wharton Properties and General Growth Properties’s Crown Building at 730 Fifth Avenue, located at the corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, recently set a new city record with rents in excess of $5,000 per square foot, as The Real Deal reported.

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But retail rents in other gateway cities are also on the rise, according to Bloomberg; San Francisco’s Union Square, for instance, saw rents surge 13 percent as vacancy fell to a record 1.1 percent.

Among shopping districts tracked by Cushman, “rents have risen in 35 percent of streets around the world — despite the increased global uncertainty experienced over the past 12 months,” according to the report.

Paris’ Avenue des Champs-Elysees placed third on the list with rents of $1,372 per square foot, while London’s New Bond Street ranked fourth at $1,321 per square foot and Milan’s Via Montenapoleone was fifth at $1,035 per square foot. [Bloomberg] – Rey Mashayekhi