Global City Indicators: Towards a Holistic View of Low Carbon City Dimensions

Global cities are the central nodes in global networks through which commodities, information, capital and people flow. Many governments have announced plans to assist their cities to become “global cities”. At the same time, the development of low carbon cities is widely considered an important strategic goal of leading cities in tackling the challenges of climate change. However, little attention has been given to the compatibility of the two development goals. It is necessary to understand the relationships of various critical dimensions of global city rankings and the city's carbon emission need to be understood. This study shows that although a city's carbon emission is an indicator with very low weight in the five global city rankings analyzed in the study, the top ranked global cities are among the cities with the lowest carbon emission. The currently high carbon emission cities can also lead to lower carbon emission by optimizing economic structure, improving R&D sector and quality of life to enhance their global rankings.