All countries and cities within them must adapt to the shift into tech in one way or another. Many industries themselves are even transforming into being tech oriented compared to a few years ago. Nevertheless, there are certainly some places that have been standing out in terms of their presence in the tech industry over the past few years. Let’s take a look at these top cities where tech has been growing the fastest. To make it applicable to as many readers as possible, let’s break it down into the different parts of the world.
Europe
Manchester, United Kingdom
Manchester currently has around 10,000 tech companies including Google, Microsoft and IBM. The local University of Manchester focuses a lot on IT and overall tech related courses to create skilled developers that will further help the growth of these companies.
Tallinn, Estonia
Tallinn has an interesting concept of the “e-residency” which allows anyone to start a tech company in there without having to physically live there. This is facilitated by the fact that a large majority of public services are available online, making the establishment of a company much easier.
Vilnius, Lithuania
This is a popular destination for fintechs and startups for expansion, as it currently has more than 1000 established startups and 200 established fintech companies. Similarly to Tallinn, the local government offers a type of visa to encourage tech businesses and talent to from all over the world to live there.
North America
San Francisco, California, USA
A classic, which is where the largest amount of valuable tech companies have been born. It acts as the central point for all developers in the area and the combination of its spirit of creativity and culture has made it a welcoming place for many tech companies to start there.
New York City, New York State, USA
Since 2010, New York City has been catching up with San Francisco in terms of its tech presence, due to access to skilled and diverse workers.
Toronto, Canada
Toronto has many business friendly policies and therefore attracts many small to medium sized enterprises. It is a very diverse city with a culture of collaboration, as the government offers help in the form of incubators, hubs, co-working facilities and accelerators.
Asia
Shanghai, China
Shanghai has been standing out for tech companies from the intellectual property point of view, especially in patenting. This has encouraged many manufacturing companies to set up there for the purpose of research and development. The tech sector in Shanghai currently has hundreds of thousands of employees.
Shenzhen, China
Similarly to Shanghai, Shenzhen has been a leader in intellectual property matters, with a focus on manufacturing. This has attracted many big players in the telecom industry.
Beijing, China
Beijing has had the biggest jump in ranking over the past 4 years, as a fastest growing tech city. It does not have as many tech incentives as other tech cities mentioned in this article, it is a popular place for companies in the smartphone industry.
