For this year's annual city listings, Metropolis Magazine took an unusual approach: they took the analysis to the streets, surveying nearly 100 design professionals across the globe to get their opinions. The result? A list that boasts not just the cities you'd expect (Milan, London, Berlin) but the under the radar powerhouses you might not have anticipated.
That doesn't mean it's entirely unpredictable. The aforementioned London and Milan have longevity on lists such as these simply because they are hubs for design - it's difficult to imagine a list like these without them. London, for all its massive scale and corporate design, also boasts a craft scene that seems to be growing each day. In Berlin, underground design movements seem to be stepping out into the daylight, be it for better or worse.
But try as we might to avoid it, design tends to gentrify - and placement on a list such as this can imply uncomfortable entanglement with issues of affordability, equity, and homogenization of local culture. As design movements in these 10 cities continue to grow, there's a responsibility to uphold the local and ensure that the things that made these cities great in the first place remain.
See Metropolis Magazine’s editors’ picks for the 2018 Powerhouse Design Cities feature here.
