Why New York is doing so well

"Many newly successful cities on the global stage—such as Shenzhen and Dubai—have sought to make themselves attractive to businesses based on price and infrastructure subsidies," three-term New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says in an opinion piece in the London-based Financial Times.

"Those competitive advantages can work in the short term, but they tend to be transitory," he writes. "For cities to have sustained success, they must compete for the grand prize: intellectual capital and talent."

In Bloomberg's view, competitiveness used to be outside of a mayor's domain. Competitiveness was decided at a national level. But today cities need to make the right moves, he says. That means many things: great parks, safe streets, extensive mass transit, and a sense that exciting things are happening.

Brooklyn, he suggests, is attracting hordes of recent college graduates because of the exciting developments there in music, art, design, food, shops, technology, and green industry. 

With so many different qualities contributing to a city's appeal or lack of appeal, readers will probably disagree as to which elements are the most important, and where the mayor of a lagging city should institute the first changes. But Bloomberg's conclusion is clear on this point: Leading cities must pursue strategies that were once thought to be only the purview of national governments.

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