Even during lockdown London was voted one of the world’s most exciting cities

Dirty, expensive, overcrowded: none of this is news for Londoners. Probably hasn’t been news for about 2,000 years. But, according to the latest Time Out Index, our annual global survey of city living that this year had almost 30,000 respondents, London was voted number one for discovering new and surprising things and number two for being exciting. Which is great news, of course, and obviously what all we proud citizens would have naturally expected.

However – and it is a pretty BIG however – London only came thirteenth in the overall list of 37 cities, well behind San Francisco, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and New York. Manchester came third. Third in the world. I mean, no disrespect to Sadiq, but they do have Andy Burnham (who told us all about why he thinks Manchester is the greatest city in the UK). Beyond that, though, the comparison of how people rated the two towns is pretty startling, and not necessarily in a good way for us.

So, only 10 percent of Mancunians said their burg was ‘expensive’, whereas in London it was 85 percent (God knows who the other 15 percent are). Some other stats: 

Stressful Manchester 5 percent, London 39 percent

Polluted Manchester 16 percent, London 56 percent

Overcrowded Manchester 3 percent, London 44 percent

Community spirit Manchester 86 percent, London 43 percent

Friendly Manchester 75 percent, London 16 percent (erk!)

Resilience Manchester 76 percent, London 45 percent

Progressive Manchester 70 percent, London 48 percent

Ease of making new friends Manchester 69 percent, London 28 percent

Ease of getting to know your neighbours Manchester 66 percent, London 26 percent

Ease of being able to relax Manchester 66 percent, London 43 percent

To be fair, some of this is pretty weird. Like is London really that unfriendly? Perhaps it’s Mancunians voting against us? But it is quite revealing to explore the way that another UK city sees itself compared to London. ‘Community spirit’ and ‘resilience’ are markedly different, both in Manchester’s favour. Maybe we’ve all been so fixated on ‘getting back to normal’ for the last 18 months that we’ve forgotten about what’s on our collective doorstep. Or maybe Londoners are just sick of surveys. Chin up! There’s always 2022…

See the whole shebang of the 2021 Time Out Index right here.

Don’t worry, there’s still a ton of great things to do in the world’s thirteenth best city. 

And new stuff is always opening here.