London’s tourist attractions and other hospitality businesses made tentative plans to reopen this summer-a full-capacity Wimbledon and Euro 2020 (final match aside) pumped tens of millions into the economy. It was a death blow, given the sector is responsible for 12% of the city’s gross domestic product.

With hotels, attractions and leisure shopping in a near-total shutdown, the industry’s contribution to London’s economy plunged from $21.6 billion in 2019 to just $4.1 billion in the past year, according to VisitBritain, the national tourism agency. Leading the carnage, of course, was the obliteration of international visitors. Where the Brexit and pandemic wrecking ball has hit the hardest, however, is in our Unemployment Rate subcategory, in which London plunged 91 spots-from #52 to #143 among global cities. There’s been speculation on the impact of Brexit on London’s prosperity ever since the referendum vote was counted in 2016: for 2022, our rankings show the city at #5 for number of Fortune Global 500 companies (identical to the previous two years) and 29th for GDP per Capita (same as last year). There’s also the small issue of Brexit, which was entirely eclipsed by the pandemic for months. Recovery-London’s and the UK’s-is not a matter of post-pandemic re-emergence. As the pandemic wrapped its fingers around the world’s windpipe in the first few months of 2020, Britain plunged to the lowest growth among the G7 countries and slipped into recession for the first time since 2008. The horrific death rate and subsequent lockdown have obliterated London economically unlike anything since wartime. The coronavirus had killed more than 16,000 Londoners as of mid-August 2021. In the darkest days of the pandemic, the UK had the highest excess death rate in Europe. Protecting culture and programming wasn’t, understandably, a priority in March 2020 for London authorities, and it remains eclipsed by larger storm clouds today. In our pre-pandemic rankings, “best” had much to do with quality-of-life factors like Programming, and London is #1 for that category, which includes Culture, Restaurants, Shopping and Nightlife. But as the pandemic grinds on, our clear understanding of “best” is losing some of its definitiveness. Since we first began ranking the world’s best cities, we’ve had a firm, data-driven idea about what “best” is-prosperity and opportunity the magnetic aspects of cities that draw talent and visitors growth.

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