The evolution of Chinese cities does not follow a single path; only by following their own strengths can they become special in people's hearts. Based on the latest year's commercial data from 160 brands, user behavior data from 17 internet companies, and big data from data institutions, CBN's New First-Tier City Research Institute ranked 338 cities at or above the prefecture level again. This 2017 latest city commercial charm ranking continues to use the five indicators from the previous year: commercial resource agglomeration, city hub status, citizen activity, lifestyle diversity, and future potential, but with some adjustments in the analysis algorithm: the expert committee of the New First-Tier City Research Institute was invited to assign weights to the five indicators, incorporating them into the scoring system through expert scoring; and below the secondary indicators, principal component analysis was used for objective weighting. The comprehensive calculation results show that the status of the four first-tier cities—Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen—remains unshakable, but the seats of the 15 "new first-tier" cities have changed somewhat, in order: Chengdu, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Chongqing, Nanjing, Tianjin, Suzhou, Xi'an, Changsha, Shenyang, Qingdao, Zhengzhou, Dalian, Dongguan, and Ningbo. Among them, Dongguan and Zhengzhou have become new entrants to the new first-tier cities. In the past year, Huawei's terminal headquarters and enterprise data center moving from Shenzhen to Dongguan can be considered a landmark event in Chinese cities. This even triggered the somewhat sensational debate of "Dongguan replacing Shenzhen," leading people to re-examine this city 60 kilometers away from Shenzhen. From Dongguan's data performance, its most prominent performance is in commercial resource agglomeration. Dongguan has a commercial area of 1,064 square kilometers, and the number of restaurants and grocery stores representing the city's basic commercial index is also in the national top ten. Now Dongguan has 7 Uniqlo stores, while four years ago it had none; Starbucks stores increased from 13 in 2013 to 31; trendy milk tea shops like Heytea also came early to this city that was once lifeless at night—this is completely different from its past image as a somewhat "rustic" factory town. What is truly important is that in Dongguan, which has a core pillar of electronics manufacturing and a massive number of factories, there are already leaders in the mobile phone industry like OPPO and vivo, and in the future, Huawei will join. This changing city offers opportunities to many young people and retains them with a better life. Zhengzhou's ranking improvement is largely due to its improved city hub status. In October 2016, the Zhengzhou-Xuzhou high-speed railway opened, meaning Zhengzhou connects three provinces—Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu—through high-speed rail, revitalizing the Central Plains region and the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration. Now, Zhengzhou can directly reach 129 cities via high-speed rail, ranking 6th nationally in the number of cities directly accessible by high-speed rail. Although the gap between these emerging cities and first-tier cities remains huge, they are indeed beginning to become the most suitable cities that many people are looking for. You see, not all cities need to do internet, finance, consumption, or real estate; each city has its own areas of expertise, and these areas have the ability to attract people with the same pursuits and different characteristics. In essence, this is the charm of a city. The list released annually by the New First-Tier City Research Institute is a system for comprehensively evaluating a city's commercial charm. In our values, relying solely on an advantage in one aspect is not enough to make a city a good city. But on the other hand, China's emerging cities are also proving that by following their own strengths, they can gradually evolve. The essence of this evolution is to bring more potential people to the city and keep them there. For this list, we used the Penrose stairs as a design concept; it is a staircase that always goes upward, and this is also our expectation for all cities: to go upward along their own staircase. The following will interpret the specific dimensions and calculation methods of the five indicators: Commercial Resource Agglomeration In the consumer field, commercial brands make rational decisions after fully researching the city's current consumption power and future potential when choosing a city and specific store location. If the conclusions of these careful evaluations by many brands—including individual operators—are aggregated, individual differences can be smoothed out, becoming an indicator for judging a city's commercial capability. The big brand preference index and basic commercial index measure this commercial capability. But each city has its own characteristics in scale, specific form, lifestyle, and even customs and culture. To more fairly evaluate a city's commercial development, we need to make the perspective more micro. This time, we introduced a new analysis method called "grid," dividing the city into 1-kilometer squares, projecting the geographical locations of brand stores into these grids, and assigning corresponding scores based on the commercial value of different categories to obtain the city's commercial core index. In addition, we still use GDP, population, and total retail sales of consumer goods to measure the city's scale. City Hub Status Cities are not isolated entities; any city has the potential to radiate its resources to other cities. When this city radiation capability performs well, it can transmit goods, capital, talent, and cultural resources to surrounding cities through transportation, logistics, and other means, making itself the center of the entire city network. The degree of transportation connectivity between cities, logistics connectivity, and regional centrality of commercial resources honestly tell us which cities are hub cities, who they radiate to, and who radiates to them. Through road distances between cities, the number of railway services connecting two cities, and civil aviation flight volumes, we calculated the transportation connectivity between cities. Among new first-tier cities, Changsha and Wuhan have the highest connectivity, followed by Hangzhou and Nanjing. Xi'an, Chengdu, and Wuhan exceed the first-tier cities except Beijing in the regional centrality of commercial resources. This is not hard to understand: when a city has stronger radiation capability and the performance of surrounding cities is less than satisfactory, brands are more willing to choose it as the first city to enter the region, which helps brand owners understand the consumption preferences of the region. Citizen Activity Citizens are the main body constituting a city's vitality. Their behaviors in the city—living, working, consuming, thinking, traveling, and entertaining—alternately light up every corner of the city. Because of China's lively online life, user behavior data on internet platforms is one of the best data sources for examining this activity, reflecting changes in the city every minute and second, and also indicating the gathering of young people. Food delivery, online shopping, cross-border shopping, movie watching, mobile payment—these consumption behaviors have been woven into the lives of young people in the city. An active city resident, in addition to some consumption behaviors needed for life, also has some further imagination and planning for life. Zhaopin's resume completion rate, Zhihu's active user count, and Didi Chuxing's activity can represent the ambition, curiosity, and appreciation for efficiency of city residents, which is also what we understand as the restless young people in the city and what they bring to the city. Nighttime activity covers the number of bars, mobile device usage at night provided by TalkingData, Didi Chuxing nighttime activity, and public transportation nighttime activity. Among new first-tier cities, Suzhou has the highest nighttime activity index score. From 22:00 to 6:00 the next morning, 30.9% of Suzhou's bus routes still provide service, and it also has enough bars. Lifestyle Diversity An important point in measuring a city's charm is how many lifestyle choices and possibilities it can provide for its citizens. Direct perception of the atmosphere of life builds a city's collective memory. For city residents, it means another more dense and lasting attraction beyond career development space. From the five dimensions of dining, culture and entertainment, tourism, sports, and consumption, which citizens frequently participate in, we obtained some data. For example, the number of cafes, bookstores, and gyms in the city provides different public living spaces; user behavior data such as video views, total box office, running kilometers, and flight orders express the lifestyle preferences of different city residents outside of work. However, compared to the absolute number of living spaces and ways provided by the city, we value the richness of these spaces and ways more. Referring to the Margalef richness index algorithm in biodiversity, we also calculated the richness of dining types and online consumer goods categories in each city. Lifestyle is actually a particularly abstract and particularly private concept; everyone has different degrees of understanding of it. What the city needs to do is provide choices. Future Potential Resource aggregation and lifestyle diversity are the biggest advantages of a city, and they continuously attract young people to flock in and stay. At the same time, high housing prices, congestion, and smog are also beginning to drive some people away; big cities are no longer their final destination. The new standards of the younger generation for choosing a career and residence remind cities that leaving room for growth and shaping for the future is equally important. People mean countless possibilities, so whether a city can attract talent is one of the key points we consider in this indicator: the number of high-quality universities, resume submissions, and the cities where returnees settle form the talent attraction index. The entrepreneurial atmosphere is another index directly pointing to the future. Hangzhou unsurprisingly becomes the most entrepreneurial city among new first-tier cities, especially in the internet and information technology fields, where startups have gained favor from a large number of investors. Consumption maturity represents whether consumers in the city clearly know their needs; people with high maturity are the most active in consumption upgrading. They have requirements for life and are more willing to spend money on their lives—this is the virtuous cycle that brand owners are most happy to see. This content comes from ZAKER partner media Outlook Think Tank -END-