VANCOUVER -- A Vancouver-based consulting company has released a list of the world's best cities, and it ranks its hometown 41st.

Resonance Consultancy describes its list - titled "World's Best Cities 2020" - as "a ranking of global place equity."

To make the list, the company, which has offices in Vancouver and New York City, scored cities on six broad categories, all starting with the letter P: "place," "people," "programming," "product," "prosperity" and "promotion."

Vancouver performs best in the "people" category, which is based on the diversity and educational attainment of city residents. Vancouver ranks number 6 among all metro areas with a population over a million in this metric, according to Resonance.

Perhaps surprisingly, the city's weakest category is "place," which Resonance says is an evaluation of "the perceived quality of (a city's) natural and built environments." Despite its legendary backdrop of mountains and ocean, Vancouver ranks 159th on this metric.

An explanation for this may be found in the criteria that make up the "place" ranking. Among the considerations Resonance took into account is the average number of sunny days a city experiences. Fellow Pacific Northwest cities Seattle (number 34 overall) and Portland, Ore. (57), rank 154th and 178th, respectively, in the "place" category.

Then again, the number one city on the list - notoriously rainy London, England - ranks 22nd for "place," presumably overcoming its lack of sunshine with highly rated neighbourhoods and landmarks (another element of the "place" category).

Vancouver also ranks outside the top 100 in Resonance's "prosperity" metric, which is based on GDP per capita and the number of Global 500 companies with their corporate headquarters in the city. Vancouver is 113th by this measure.

The city achieves middling scores in the remaining three categories.

It ranks 52nd for "promotion," which measures Facebook check-ins, Google searches, Instagram hashtags and other data about residents and visitors sharing impressions of the city online.

Vancouver places 67th for "product," which measures a city's "hardware," including airport connectivity, universities, museums and attractions.

And, the city ranks 68th for "programming," which measures shopping, dining, nightlife and culture through TripAdvisor reviews.

Vancouver's overall ranking of 41 is good for second place among Canadian cities. Toronto is the highest-ranked, placing 17th overall. Other Canadian cities in the top 100 included Montreal (45th overall), Calgary (48th), Ottawa (77th) and Edmonton (83rd).

The top 25 cities in the world, according to Resonance, were:

  1. London
  2. New York
  3. Paris
  4. Tokyo
  5. Moscow
  6. Dubai
  7. Singapore
  8. Barcelona
  9. Los Angeles
  10. Rome
  11. San Francisco
  12. Madrid
  13. Chicago
  14. Abu Dhabi
  15. Amsterdam
  16. Beijing
  17. Toronto
  18. Doha
  19. Hong Kong
  20. San Diego
  21. Boston
  22. Sydney
  23. Las Vegas
  24. Miami
  25. San Jose