How satisfied are people with the cities they call home, and what gives certain places their pull? These questions lie at the heart of City Pulse 2025: The Magnetic City, a comprehensive study by the Gensler Research Institute that surveyed more than 33,000 residents across 65 cities worldwide between Spring 2020 and early 2025. The ambition of the research is pragmatic as much as philosophical: to help city leaders, planners, and developers understand which investments meaningfully improve quality of life and which merely gesture at it.
Rather than ranking cities by conventional metrics alone, City Pulse 2025 centers on perception: how residents experience economic strength, safety, vibrancy, climate preparedness, neighborhood investment, housing insecurity, and crime. The results suggest that while people may be drawn to cities by opportunity and infrastructure, they remain because of belonging, an emotional and spatial condition shaped by design, policy, and daily life. While the report did not explain why the residents responded as they did, we examined what each city is doing to be perceived favorably.
Why People Move and Why They Stay
The study reveals a striking degree of global restlessness. Nearly one-third of respondents would like to leave their current country, with the highest proportions coming from Africa (37%) and North America (33%). Increasingly, those moves are toward smaller or mid-sized cities, places that promise affordability, access, and a more legible urban experience.
Yet growth comes with friction. As the report notes, rapid in-migration can strain housing supply, infrastructure, and civic identity. Cities face a familiar paradox: how to grow without eroding the very qualities that made them desirable.
Across age groups (young adults, families, established professionals, and older residents), the fundamentals remain consistent. Safety, affordability, access to employment, healthcare, and mobility form the baseline. But “staying power,” the likelihood that residents will put down roots, is shaped by a richer mix: public transit, walkability, schools, cultural life, proximity to social networks, and the sense that a city is investing in its future as well as its present.
In the United States, San Antonio and Minneapolis tied for the highest staying power, with 53% of residents expressing a strong desire to remain, an indicator not just of satisfaction, but of attachment.
Global Signals: Belonging as Infrastructure
Globally, Abu Dhabi emerged as the most magnetic city in the study, posting exceptionally high scores across every category from economic strength and safety to neighborhood investment and crime reduction. While the Emirate’s political and economic context is unique, its performance underscores a broader lesson: residents respond to clear governance, visible investment, and environments that feel secure, functional, and well cared for.
More broadly, the study confirms that intangibles matter. Pride, identity, and a sense of belonging function as a form of soft infrastructure, amplifying the impact of physical systems such as transit, housing, and public space.
The Most Magnetic Cities in the U.S.
In the United States, no single city dominated across all categories. Instead, different places excelled in distinct dimensions of urban life, reflecting varied priorities and planning cultures.
Economic Strength: Austin (60%)
Austin’s score reflects a diversified and rapidly growing economy anchored in technology, education, healthcare, and creative industries. Population growth, business formation, and a steady influx of talent reinforce a sense of opportunity, even as affordability pressures mount.
Peace & Stability: Boston (59%)
Boston’s high rating aligns with targeted investments in public safety and public realm management. Enhanced lighting, maintenance, outreach programs, and visible coordination between city agencies have reshaped residents’ perceptions of safety, particularly in downtown districts. Record-low homicide rates further reinforce this sense of stability.
Vibrancy: Miami (66%)
Miami’s vibrancy is experiential: density, nightlife, cultural expression, and an outdoor lifestyle enabled by climate. The city’s public life spills into streets, waterfronts, and plazas, creating a sense of constant motion that residents readily identify as urban energy.
Climate Disaster Preparedness: Tampa (57%)
Tampa’s performance reflects sustained investment in flood mitigation, storm preparedness, and regional coordination. Residents recognize visible infrastructure upgrades and public engagement efforts, an important reminder that resilience must be both functional and perceptible to build trust.
Improving Quality of Life: Austin & Minneapolis (49%)
Minneapolis’s long-standing commitment to parks, trails, and multimodal mobility has produced tangible everyday benefits. Light rail, bus rapid transit, protected bike lanes, and high-quality public spaces contribute to a city that feels navigable and humane.
Austin, meanwhile, pairs economic momentum with expanding outdoor amenities, corridor redesigns, and growing cultural infrastructure—investments that reinforce civic pride even amid rapid growth.
Investing in Neighborhoods: Detroit (51%)
Detroit stands out for the visibility and distribution of its neighborhood investments. Renovated parks, rebuilt streets, new libraries, and the removal of long-blighted structures signal a shift from downtown-centric redevelopment to a more citywide recovery. After decades of disinvestment, incremental change carries great meaning.
Addressing Homelessness: Columbus (30%)
Columbus residents point to a coordinated, centralized approach to homelessness, supported by strong public–private collaboration, supportive housing development, and prevention strategies such as eviction assistance. Lower visibility of street homelessness compared to peer cities also shapes perception.
Reducing Crime: Boston (46%)
Boston’s crime reduction score reflects measurable declines in violence, paired with community-based strategies and consistent communication. Residents experience safety not only through statistics, but through everyday cues, clean streets, active public spaces, and responsive governance.
The Texas Showdown: A Comparative Snapshot
Texas cities clustered near or below the global averages across most categories, reflecting shared growth pressures and similar urban challenges.
Austin consistently ranks highest in Texas, particularly in economic strength, vibrancy, and perceived improvements to quality of life. Its performance reflects more than job growth alone. Residents are responding to visible public investments: protected bike lanes, trail networks, corridor redesigns, and the steady emergence of mixed-use districts such as Mueller, the Domain, and East Riverside. Even before the full realization of Project Connect, incremental mobility improvements signal long-term commitment. The result is a city that feels active, future-oriented, and culturally legible, though affordability pressures threaten to undermine these gains.
Dallas performs strongly in categories tied to governance and capital deployment, including reducing crime and investing in neighborhoods. Large-scale public and private investment has reshaped districts such as Oak Cliff and Red Bird, while streetscape upgrades, park expansions, and targeted redevelopment in South Dallas have made neighborhood-level change visible to residents. Dallas’s higher per-capita income also factors into perceptions of stability and safety. At the same time, persistent concerns about displacement and uneven access highlight the tension between revitalization and equity.
San Antonio distinguishes itself most clearly in climate disaster preparedness, a reflection of long-standing investment in flood-control infrastructure and watershed management. The city’s underground tunnel system protecting the River Walk and downtown core represents an early recognition of climate risk as an urban design issue. San Antonio’s family-oriented culture, walkable historic districts, and affordability relative to its peers support its solid showing in quality-of-life and staying-power measures; however, lower scores in addressing homelessness and neighborhood investment point to challenges in scaling social infrastructure alongside growth.
Houston, the largest and most spatially diffuse of the four, tends to rank lowest across several categories. Its exposure to extreme weather, combined with fragmented governance and car-dependent development patterns, shapes residents’ perceptions of vulnerability and instability. While Houston benefits from a powerful economy and cultural diversity, the absence of consistent, visible public-space investment and comprehensive mobility alternatives appears to dilute residents’ sense of cohesion and safety.
Notably, all Texas cities scored below the global average in addressing homelessness and neighborhood investment suggesting systemic gaps rather than city-specific failures.
Designing for Magnetism
The lesson of City Pulse 2025 is not that cities must excel at everything, but that magnetism is cumulative. Residents respond to coherence: when policy, infrastructure, and design align with daily life.
According to the study, cities that retain residents tend to share key characteristics:
- A manageable cost of living
- Connected, rather than fragmented, neighborhoods
- Accessible healthcare and services
- Public spaces that foster emotional connection
- Environmental restoration and climate resilience
- Walkable, compact urban form
- Safety designed into streets and neighborhoods
- Authentic cultural and civic experiences
As Mark Erdly, Cities & Urban Design Leader at Gensler, notes, “Livability is the foundation on which happiness can flourish.” Designing cities that people want to stay in requires more than iconic buildings or ambitious master plans; it demands attention to how places feel, function, and evolve over time.
Ultimately, The Magnetic City reframes urban success not as growth alone, but as belonging. In that measure, design at every scale remains one of the most powerful tools cities have.
Cover Image: Courtesy of Gensler San Antonio. Photography by Ronnie Leone.
Elizabeth Williams is Editor and a Writer for Modern in San Antonio.