In 2019, Chengdu ranked first in the list of new first-tier cities

Everyone who has had urban experience, even if they have the same occupation and similar experience, can easily put forward different requirements for the city, from the housing, income from work, the appearance of streets, the comfort of the natural environment to the care of what kind of people live in the same city.

Only by collecting thousands of answers about the expectations of urban life can we describe our ideal life.

This is the fourth year that the New Front City Research Institute of Finance and Economics has produced the Charm List of City Business. As in previous years, we collected 170 major consumer brands'business store data and 18 headline Internet companies' user behavior data and big city data of data institutions. We evaluated 337 cities at or above the level of business resource concentration, urban hub, urban activity, lifestyle diversity and future plasticity according to five dimensions index. The algorithm is also consistent with the previous one: the final results are obtained by integrating the scoring of the expert committee of the New Front City Research Institute and the principal component analysis method. In last year's list, first-tier cities slightly changed seats, but this year they have changed back, ranking is still wide and deep north.

In 2019, 15 new front-line cities were Chengdu, Hangzhou, Chongqing, Wuhan, Xi'an, Suzhou, Tianjin, Nanjing, Changsha, Zhengzhou, Dongguan, Qingdao, Shenyang, Ningbo and Kunming. The ranks of the top four new front-line cities are relatively stable, and Wuxi has fallen out of this echelon again after 2017. In the list of new frontline cities, there are 5 cities in the north and 10 cities in the south. In addition to the 3:1 pattern of the first-tier cities, the North-South difference has indeed surpassed the gap between the East and the West, and has become an important feature of the competition pattern among the top cities in China. Kunming has become the only new city on the list of first-tier cities this year. Its remarkable growth is in talent attraction - last year the index ranked only 23 in the country, and this year it has risen to 12th place. At the same time, all the indicators of life style diversity in Kunming have made great strides. Over the past few years, people in new cities are willing to try new ways of life, and their demands for cities have become diversified. The northeast city, which lacks the new industry direction, has a slow pace and has not changed much for decades, obviously can not satisfy people's long-cherished wish for ideal life. Shenyang is the only new front-line city in Northeast China today, ranking 17 in all cities, down 3 places from 2016. In this year's target setting, we focus on the attitudes of young people. It's not just college students with higher education, but young people aged 18 to 35 who have a foothold in the city and strive to live by their own skills are the future of the city.

In the whole algorithmic framework, the data that constitute the first dimension index are from 19 second dimension and 79 third dimension to the fourth dimension, and the number of indicators has exceeded 100. In the May issue of YiMagazine, First Finance and Economics, and the online release of the 2009 Urban Business Charm List, we rank all 79 three-dimensional indicators under the five dimensions of the urban evaluation framework in turn. You will find that all cities have their own distinct characteristics in the index high-low curve. No perfect city, no two identical shapes. If every shape is a form of the city, then the development of the city is far more than 10,000 possibilities.

New Front City Research Institute has used the rational and rigorous location logic of the business world for four consecutive years to measure the commercial strength of each city. The degree of commercial resource agglomeration is based on this logic. It comprehensively evaluates the degree of urban commercial resource agglomeration by considering the degree of favor of mainstream consumer brands, the strength of urban business circles and the maturity of basic businesses.

The gap between North and South commercial strength is obviously widening further. The average ranking of commercial resource concentration in Northwest, North and Northeast China declined collectively, while the ranking of cities in South and East China went up as a whole. Corresponding to the fall of northeast cities, the southern cities in the Pearl River Delta have been more favored by big brands in the past year, and their commercial strength has greatly improved.

In 2018, at least 15 large shopping malls opened in Guangzhou. For the first time since 2016, Guangzhou's big brand preference index surpassed Shenzhen and Chengdu and rose to the third place in the country. Among 170 major consumer brands monitored by the new frontline city commercial database, the total increment of Foshan consumer brand stores ranked eighth in the country in 2018.

Building a huge urban complex and a gorgeous and orderly business circle is not the only way for cities to enhance their attractiveness to commercial brands. Restaurants, super convenience stores and clothing stores, these small businesses are not only meaningful to the urban space, but also a rare commercial charm of the city.

Chengdu, Chongqing and Dongguan are new frontline cities with high level of basic business development. As of February 2019, Dongguan has 39 537 convenience stores, more than all the first-tier cities, ranking first in the country; Chengdu has more food and clothing stores than Shanghai.