Since 2018, every year we have compiled a list of Germany’s largest cities with a population of 30,000 or more, on the basis of their level of development in various urban action fields. Munich has maintained its leading position in our ranking and is the first city to reach a smart city development level of 50%. Besides Bavaria’s capital city, smaller cities with fewer than 100,000 inhabitants have also fared well this year.
 

Ongoing Development Requires Strategic Action

DCities’ development over the past few years illustrates the importance of strategic action on the part of municipal stakeholders. We have now published our seventh Smart City Ranking. Every city faces its own particular challenges. Where urban stakeholders are able to identify tailored responses to these challenges via their urban transformation process, they will achieve continuous ongoing growth.

Not only has Munich thus maintained the first-place ranking which it achieved last year. In medium-sized cities such as Bamberg and Konstanz, urban stakeholders are likewise operating in a strategically solid and implementation-oriented manner. Accordingly, both of these cities are ranked in the top 10 of the total of 413 German cities featured in our list. In general, this year's ranking clearly shows that, on average, it is above all medium-sized cities – and smaller medium-sized cities in particular – which have improved most strongly year-over-year: By comparison with the previous year, smaller mid-sized cities (i.e. with a population of between 30,000 and 50,000) have achieved an 18.9% average percentage increase in their smart city development level. They have thus fared slightly better than larger medium-sized cities (population of between 50,000 and 100,000), which have improved by 14.7%, and have significantly outperformed Germany's major cities (population of more than 100,000), which have achieved an 8% improvement.

The remaining cities featured in the top 10 are as follows: Hamburg and Cologne are in second and third place respectively, at 48.1% and 46.4%. Berlin is ranked fourth, at 45.8%. It is followed by Heidelberg (45.3%) and Darmstadt (44.5%) in fifth and sixth place as well as Bamberg (44.3%) in seventh place and Bochum (44.0%), which is ranked eighth. Konstanz (43.2%) and Mannheim (43.1%) are ranked ninth and tenth.
 

Top 3 Emerging Cities: Falkensee, Nienburg (Weser) and Schwabach

As well as our overall city ranking, we also identify those cities which have realized the strongest improvement in their smart city development level within the space of a year: the emerging cities. The city of Falkensee in Brandenburg has made particularly strong progress. This city with a population of around 45,000 has improved by twelve percentage points, from 15.7% in the previous year to its current 27.7%. Falkensee has made particularly impressive use of innovative AI technologies – including an AI-based system to detect people drowning in its new indoor swimming pool as well as its cityGPT assistant "Falko," a digital chatbot which enables more efficient communication with Falkensee’s inhabitants, including multilingual information on administrative matters. Nienburg (Weser), Lower Saxony, is the second-ranked emerging city, followed by Schwabach in Bavaria in third place.
 

Ensuring Urban Resilience Through Forward-Looking Action

FFor Dr. Lucia Wright, a Director at Haselhorst Associates Consulting who is responsible for its Urban Transformation segment, this ranking also demonstrates the importance of cities’ adaptability. Over the past few years alone, cities have faced general crises – such as the Covid pandemic – as well as their own specific crises in the context of climate change. These include flooding, strong winds and heat waves, for instance.

In this context, a smart city is characterized by a high level of resilience. This means that now more than ever, our team of consultants considers that it is important for urban stakeholders to act in a forward-looking and flexible manner. If they are able to do so and if they continuously review their respective areas of focus, this will be reflected in their position in the ranking. This is illustrated by the top three cities in our Smart City Ranking. Munich, Hamburg and Cologne already led the way in 2023. These three cities have maintained their positions due to their continuous ongoing development in all of our smart city areas and their identification of effective solutions for their individual needs.
 

Using Data Holistically and Bringing Urban Stakeholders on Board

Another important development factor is the involvement of all of the relevant stakeholders within a city – particularly with a view to efficient data use. Targeted use of data, which are often in any case already collected, provides cities with a significant lever in order to further improve their levels of resilience and sustainability. "Ideally, the structures in place within municipal institutions and beyond mean that once data have been collected, they can also be used by other departments," says Dr. Wright. Important resources can thus be preserved.
 

Systematic Progress Assessment as the Next Step

Now that a large number of cities are making the transition to smart city status, the process of evaluation is increasingly important. This is particularly so where a wide range of funding programs for smart cities are gradually being phased out and urban stakeholders are thus faced with the question: Where does my city currently stand, and how should it proceed with its projects? "Systematic progress assessment is key, since it is the only way for urban stakeholders to make well-founded decisions," says Dr. Wright and adds: "The findings of our Smart City Ranking provide urban stakeholders with the perfect framework for this. It enables cities to precisely track their individual development over a number of years, which in turn provides them with the basis to develop new, innovative measures in support of their urban transformation."
 

Methodology

For our Smart City Ranking, we examined a total of 413 cities in ten different areas: Smart City Strategy (basis), Digital Infrastructure, Mobility, Energy & the Environment, Buildings & Neighborhoods, Healthcare, Education, Public Administration, Tourism and Business & Trade. This entails a review of these cities’ strategic and conceptual focus in these individual areas as well as their level of progress achieved in relation to specific projects. The data set consists of information from official statistics plus additional information relating to the city in question, all of which is publicly available information. To ensure the ranking’s objectivity, cities are not permitted to provide data for the ranking. Overall, we included more than 33,000 data points in preparing our current ranking. This information was compiled in the period from April to August 2024.

You will find our Smart City Ranking here.