A study by Swedish smart city data company ProptechOS has ranked which cities are best prepared for a ‘smart city’ future. According to the research, the best positioned cities for a smart future are Austin, Los Angeles, and London.

ProptechOS ranked cities on eleven separate metrics, grouped into three broad categories: the strengths of their tech infrastructure, their green infrastructure, and their tech job markets.

Austin was the highest ranked overall, mainly due to its tech job market strength. It scored under London for both technology and green infrastructures. Although it ranked highest overall in the United States, several US cities had stronger tech job markets, including Washington DC, San Francisco, Dallas and Seattle.

Both Austin’s technology infrastructure (87.7 out of 100) and green infrastructure (91.7 out of 100) rank significantly high in comparison to many other cities, with the 8th highest number of publicly accessible EV charging stations (329), the 11th highest per 10,000 people (33.2), and the 8th highest number of ‘Internet of Things’ companies (76) headquartered and operating there.

US runners up included Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco.

In general, all US smart cities out-ranked other countries’ smart cities, with the sole exception of London, which came second in the global rankings, and highest overall globally for technical and green infrastructures.

Europe scored lower than the United States by a significant margin. Only London was in the top three, and out-scored the two top US cities by two of the three categories. The next highest European smart city was Amsterdam, which scored 16th on the global rankings.

ProptechOS began its analysis with a seed list of 100 cities from Europe and the USA (capital and most populated) and originally considered 18 measurements/indicators related to the OECD’s recommendations for smart cities.

The study’s ranking of indicators was narrowed down to 11 to ensure like-for-like comparisons between cities.

Each metric was scored and normalized out of 100 — is equally weighted to a score out of 100 for their parent categories: technology and connectivity infrastructure, sustainability infrastructure, and the tech job-driven market before a final overall score per city were given.