Infrastructure, trust key to cities success as Nairobi, Rome stagnate

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Residents in high-performing cities tend to perceive more transparency in their habitats and want to be actively engaged in the processes that shape their quality of life.

This is according to the IMD Smart City Index 2026, released on Tuesday.

The report, titled “The Quest for Trust and Transparency,” assessed five new cities in 2026, including Tianjin and Zhuhai in China, Hafar Al Batin and Hail in Saudi Arabia, and San Salvador in El Salvador, bringing the total to 148.

The results, published by the IMD World Competitiveness Centre (WCC), indicate that smartness is not only about the latest technology.

Higher overall performance tends to coincide with stronger citizen perceptions of good governance, transparency, and effective digital services.

Cities whose residents agree that “information on local government decisions is easily accessible” rank higher, while those where residents report contributing to decision-making tend to show higher satisfaction across multiple areas.

“The most advanced urban centres, where citizens feel happiest, are not necessarily those distinguished by their utopian skylines, visible sensor networks, or pure technological sophistication,” said Director of the WCC Arturo Bris.

“Instead, they stand out for how effectively they align governance structures, sustainability priorities, public investment decisions, and perhaps most importantly, the cultivation of citizen trust.”

India’s cities remain in the lower third of the Index, despite major technology hubs such as Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad, where the citizen-reported technology scores are among the highest worldwide.

Smart performance

This is because their governance and participation scores lag behind the digital economy. Across the 148 cities surveyed, scores in the structures pillar are a stronger and more consistent predictor of overall smart performance than technology scores.

Zurich retains the top spot in this seventh edition of the annual report. Oslo remains in second place, Geneva in third, while London and Copenhagen enter the top five at fourth and fifth, respectively.

AlUla rose 27 places, and Washington DC gained 23 places. Bordeaux and Lyon were each down 19, and Ottawa and Shenzhen were down 18.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, ranked sixth and 10th, respectively, show that the Gulf model of State-directed digital investment can generate civic confidence when service delivery is high and of good quality.

Hanoi (97th) and Ho Chi Minh City (105th) have technology scores comparable to many European capitals and rank among the highest for trust in online government scores.

Almost every city in the bottom 20 of the 2026 ranking, including Rome, Athens, São Paulo, Amman, and Nairobi, has a higher average technology score than structures score, but didn’t change its smart city ranking of 136, equivalent to a C rating for this year and last year.

It records a trust score of 0.760 and an anti-corruption score of just 0.132, the second lowest in the dataset. This, the report says, does not mean that governance quality is irrelevant, but that trust is context-dependent and multi-layered.

The reverse is true of the top cities: Zurich, Oslo, Geneva, and Copenhagen all lead on institutions, infrastructure, and structures-related indicators, with technology-related indicators performing less strongly.

The data also shows that cities can be affluent and technologically connected while remaining untrustworthy. 

The 2026 Smart City Index reveals that a circular logic at the heart of urban intelligence: trust enables investments in institutions, infrastructure, and public services that improve quality of life.

“When this improved quality of life is delivered transparently and equitably, trust is naturally reinforced,” said the Index.

Athens, ranked 139th, and Rome, 143rd, both record anti-corruption scores below 0.25 and citizen participation scores lower than many Sub-Saharan African cities.

A unique feature of IMD’s report is that it puts aside hard data to focus on the human aspect of city living, computing the answers of a survey of about 400 inhabitants per city to rank cities by their “liveability.”

To compare like with like, cities are grouped (1–4) according to their Subnational Human Development Index measure.

The WCC defines a smart city as one that strikes a good balance between its economic prowess (such as jobs and business activity), applied technology, environmental concerns, and inclusiveness to facilitate a high quality of life for its citizens.