Is Philly the 11th-Best City on the Planet?

A business school in Spain seems to think so.

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Folks who have embraced our city’s lovable inferiority complex are going to have a hard time making sense of this: Philadelphia has been named the 11th-best city on the planet by IESE Business School in Spain, part of its annual Cities in Motion Index (ICIM)

Seriously. We’re better than Amsterdam. We’re the second-best American city on the list. Here’s the Top 20 list:

Tokyo London New York Zürich Paris Geneva Basel Osaka Seoul Oslo Philadelphia Los Angeles Dallas Copenhagen Eindhoven Amsterdam Sydney Stockholm Chicago Baltimore

Megan Willet at Business Insider explains:

To establish the ranking, researchers studied 135 cities across 55 countries, and based their results on over 50 indicators along 10 different dimensions including governance, public management, urban planning, technology, environment, international outreach, social cohesion, mobility and transportation, human capital (ability to attract talent), and economy.

Well, um….

Before you get too skeptical, consider the auspicious timing of a new column from Deborah Diamond of Campus Philly and Steve Wray of the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia. Philly, they say in the Philadelphia Business Journal, is becoming a “brain magnet.” It’s mostly a celebration of Campus Philly’s 10th anniversary, but it offers reasons to think we’re awesome:

The future for Philadelphia is exciting. We are now a net population winner over New York City (more people move from there to here than from here to there). Enrollment is growing at our regional colleges and universities, providing even more opportunity for Philadelphia to add young, educated residents.

So maybe we are all that.