Watch this! Edmonton's rise eyed by Oxford Economics

New York, London, Tokyo — Edmonton? The latest Oxford Economics Global Cities Index includes our city as one of five North American metropolises in its inaugural "Top Cities to Watch." As the Financial Post noted, it's the only one from Canada, joining Boise, ID, Durham, NC, Jacksonville, FL, and San Antonio, TX as places that share "productivity-led growth, an ability to move up the value chain, and their increasing strength in attracting innovative businesses and the highest-skilled workers." The report notes that Edmonton's strengths in the "volatile" oil and gas sector are supplemented by strong diversification, particularly out of the University of Alberta and the public sector. Usual suspects such as the forthcoming pipeline to the West Coast, acting as Canada's festival city, and housing affordability contributed to the ranking. Notably, Oxford projects Edmonton's population and workforce will be the second-fastest growing in Canada and the United States over the next five years.

The designation seemingly applies to the metropolitan region, as Oxford lists our population as 1.7 million. (In January, Edmonton Global tracked Statistics Canada data from July 2024 and 2025 that indicated Edmonton was Canada's fastest growing metropolitan area.) Other key figures in the Oxford report list the region's GDP at US$81 billion, or $48,200 per person. Edmonton's strongest ranking among six pull-out scores is governance, at 61st among 1,000 cities ranked. Edmonton's "archetype" in the report is that of an "industrial hub." Although the forecaster cites housing affordability as a plus, it also lists "high housing expenditure" as a weakness.

Oxford Economics was founded in 1981 out of Templeton College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford. It has since been described as one of the foremost global advisory firms, having measured civic economies for more than two decades and publishing its cities index annually since 2024. All of the cities in the global top 20 are in the U.S., Asia, or Europe, with Edmonton ranking 125th among 1,000 cities. Although they were not deemed as "top cities to watch," other Canadian cities outranked us on the full list, with Toronto in 20th place, Vancouver in 24th, Montreal in 62nd, and Calgary in 69th.