Unmanned delivery vehicles run in a street of Shunyi District in Beijing, capital of China, Aug. 22, 2023. (Xinhua/Ren Chao)

"Some of the issues that are faced by large cities around the world have often been well addressed in a number of Chinese cities. One of them is traffic and road infrastructure," said the Swiss expert. 

"Chinese cities have been at the forefront of many changes in many respects. We have one Chinese city among the super champions, that is Beijing," Bruno Lanvin, president of the Smart City Observatory of the IMD, told Xinhua in a video interview.

Beijing ranked 22nd, 17th, 12th and 13th respectively in the 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024 edition of the Smart City Index published yearly by the IMD, the International Institute for Management Development, a business school headquartered in Switzerland.

Europe and Asia contain the world's smartest cities, shows the 2024 edition of the index. This year's Top 20 featured even more Asian and European cities.

The six cities in the Top 20 which the researchers call "super champions" are Zurich, Oslo, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, Beijing and Seoul.

"Some of the issues that are faced by large cities around the world have often been well addressed in a number of Chinese cities. One of them is traffic and road infrastructure," Lanvin said.

A visitor interacts with an intelligent robot at the World Robot Conference 2023 in Beijing, capital of China, Aug. 16, 2023. (Xinhua/Peng Ziyang)

He stressed that the increase in the number of connectivity hubs such as newly built airports in cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong gave them a further boost.

Meanwhile, U.S. cities such as Washington D.C., Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City and Chicago have been losing ground, the index also showed.

Canada's Ottawa and Montreal have also dropped in the ranking. So for the first time since the index's creation, no North American cities entered the Top 20 of the index this year.

Since 2019, the IMD has produced the Smart City Index offering a balanced focus on economic and technological aspects of smart cities on the one hand, and human-centricity of smart cities on the other.

Researchers combined hard data and survey responses from citizens in 142 cities worldwide, with Al Khobar in Saudi Arabia being a new addition, to show how technology is enabling cities to achieve a greater quality of life for their inhabitants.

Looking ahead, Lanvin emphasized that cities must design and adopt strategies that can cope with various challenges arising from growing uncertainties.

"Health-related concerns remain high, while climate-related ones grow even larger, a mix complicated by renewed international tensions," he noted.

"Trust and good governance are growing in importance, and the significance of AI in city design and management is set to increase. Counterintuitive as it may sound, AI can help cities to become more human-centric," he added.