A Comprehensive City Vitality Index Guide

A city's infrastructure does not define all of its strengths. Many factors influence the overall measurable strength, as determined by the City Vitality Index.

This framework breaks down the complexity of assessing economic momentum, the built environment, and signals of growth potential to reveal a city’s true strengths. This index plays a significant role for businesses, investors, and policymakers who want to make data-backed decisions about markets and locations. In this City Vitality Index guide, we will take you through its strategic importance and what it entails. Let’s dive in!

The City Vitality Index is an advanced, data-driven framework that measures how dynamically a city’s economy is functioning, with a strong focus on economic vibrancy and infrastructure readiness. Rather than being obsessed with the significance of individual indicators, it assesses the overall “health” and momentum of a given urban ecosystem using consistent, comparable metrics.

It is similar to measuring an individual's quality of life: not simply how fit the individual is or what their diet consists of, but rather how the individual is living their life as a whole. For example, if a city has high levels of commercial activity but limited connectivity to economic corridors, the city could still be ranked within the average range, suggesting both strengths and vulnerabilities.

Now that you know what is City Vitality Index, let us understand how this framework blends data and analytical depth to provide actionable insights for decision-makers.

• Data Sources

  CVI draws on a variety of reliable, observation-based and economic data sources. These include satellite-derived indicators of economic activity, geospatial information, infrastructure and connectivity data, population distribution, business activity data, and macroeconomic trends. This diverse basis of information ensures that the index represents real-life metropolitan activity and is not a biased (or single) view of activity or change.

• Real-Time Insights

  Annual static reports, while helpful in getting an idea about a city’s economic performance, do not provide a full picture. CVI reflects additional, more frequently updated signals such as changes in night-time light intensity, shifts in business activity, and patterns of urban expansion. These dynamic signals add a very informative layer and visibility into changes occurring in the city, allowing businesses and policymakers to respond more quickly than they could with traditional lagging indicators.

• Granular Analysis

  The index can move beyond national or state-level representation to reflect differences between cities and districts. This granularity also enables the identification of sub-city clusters of growth, stress, and opportunity that broad, country-level metrics can easily miss. This further allows businesses and policymakers to design more targeted interventions or investments instead of taking the “one size fits all” approach in a growing city.

• Correlation with GDP

  Movements captured by CVI indicators often display a strong correlation with measures such as GDP. They are a useful signal of a city's economic direction. When there are shifts in vitality trends, such as increased economic activity or a slowdown in development intensity, the patterns can often foreshadow substantial economic changes long before traditional GDP reports reflect them.

• Objective and Data-Driven

  Since CVI relies on empirical, observation-based and consistently processed data rather than subjective evaluations, it can provide an objective, unbiased view of urban economic performance. This helps CVI evaluations build trust amongst investors, businesses, and governments who need to assess a city’s current dynamics and future potential.

When decision-makers understand what is City Vitality Index, they can make sharper and more relevant decisions based on how cities are actually evolving. Here are a few significant ways in which it influences how stakeholders assess a city’s future potential.

• Identifies Growth Opportunities

  CVI highlights areas of commercial activity, evolving demand patterns, and districts gaining momentum. This ultimately helps businesses in assessing where there is a rise in demand, sectors that are gaining traction, and which parts of the city may yield a strategic advantage with early investments.

• Assesses Economic Trends

  Because CVI brings together timely signals derived from satellite and economic data, it helps to flag changes in economic momentum before they appear in conventional measures. CVI highlights where economic activity and development intensity are trending, thereby supporting more evidence-based forecasting and planning.

• Informs Policy Decisions

  The CVI lets governments and urban planners think more strategically about where to invest in infrastructure, support business ecosystems, and strengthen underperforming districts. Given that the CVI is data-driven, it supports policy choices that are based on current conditions rather than outdated or purely anecdotal assumptions.

• Helps Investors

  Investors gain better clarity about how a city or district is performing, the risks it faces, and its future prospects. CVI highlights areas with economic resilience, rising business density, and structural challenges that might need to be factored into capital deployment. This helps make investment decisions more strategic and can increase the likelihood of better risk-adjusted returns for investors.

CVI breaks urban performance into practical lenses, each offering a unique view into a city’s economic and spatial performance. This helps stakeholders gain insights into what is happening in a city, and more importantly, why it is happening. CVI itself focuses strongly on economic activity and infrastructure, and users often combine it with complementary datasets to examine the broader dimensions outlined below.

• Economic Activity

  This dimension looks at business activity, employment trends, commercial vibrancy, and demand signals. It reflects how dynamic and resilient the economic engine is. For example, a surge in new MSME registrations or enterprise activity can signal rising confidence in the entrepreneurial disposition of a city and its economic vitality.

• Infrastructure Quality

  The availability and reach of physical and digital infrastructure, such as transport networks, utilities, and connectivity, strongly influence CVI readings. Cities that have robust connectivity, reliable public services, and well-developed infrastructure tend to attract more firms and investors, which is reflected in stronger vitality signals.

• Environmental Sustainability

  Environmental sustainability is a complementary lens that stakeholders can explore alongside CVI insights by using additional environmental datasets. This can include aspects such as green cover, pollution management initiatives, and sustainable resource planning. For instance, a city that actively expands green and resilient infrastructure can strengthen its long-term attractiveness for businesses and investors when viewed in combination with vitality data.

• Social Inclusion

  Social inclusion is all about access: access to education, health care, housing, and economic opportunity for different communities. While CVI is centred on economic and infrastructure signals, organisations can layer it with social indicators to understand how far growth is reaching underserved areas and where inclusive policy action is most needed.

• Mobility and Connectivity

  Mobility and connectivity describe how effectively people and goods traverse a city using its transport and logistics networks. CVI’s focus on connectivity and infrastructural links helps stakeholders identify where transport corridors and hubs are enabling productivity gains, and where limited connectivity might be constraining growth.

• Safety and Governance

  Safety and governance relate to how predictably and transparently a city is managed, and how effectively public institutions function. While CVI does not directly measure crime or governance scores, its insights on economic activity and infrastructure can be read together with governance and public-safety data to understand how institutional quality is influencing development outcomes.

Understanding what is City Vitality Index goes beyond its elements. It also involves knowing what methodologies those elements use, and what the data sources are from which all the information is collected and analysed. Here are some of the key types of data used for calculating CVI-like measures, and the methodologies commonly employed:

• Satellite & Night-Light Data

  Utilises satellite imagery to track economic density, patterns of urbanisation, and the intensity of activity across districts and cities. Night-time lights are a powerful proxy for development and economic vibrancy.

• Business & Economic Activity Data

  Uses business registrations, firm density, sectoral composition, and macroeconomic indicators to capture how formal economic activity is distributed and how it is changing over time. These data help anchor the index in measured economic performance.

• Official & Population Data

  Relies on official statistics and population distribution datasets to provide demographic and socioeconomic baselines. These help ensure that vitality measures are interpreted against the size and characteristics of the people and enterprises in each area.

• AI & Machine Learning

  Uses AI and machine learning to organise and analyse the data, identify patterns, weight and score performance along various dimensions, as well as generate predictive insights into future trends based on historical relationships.

All these data sources and methodologies blend to create a fluid, evidence-based index that synthesises current realities and signals about future momentum.

CVI scores or rankings indicate how well a city or district is performing in terms of economic vibrancy and infrastructure readiness, relative to others in the network being assessed. Higher positions are associated with stronger economic momentum and better connectivity; lower positions may reflect stress points or underperformance. The purpose is not simply to compare cities, but to understand why there are gaps and where to take action.

Illustrative Vitality Bands

Organisations often classify results into easy-to-read bands so that decision-makers can quickly interpret what a score or rank implies. An example of such bands could be:

Now that you have a holistic understanding of what is City Vitality Index, let us take a look at a few use cases that can help you grasp its real-world applications.

• Urban Planning and Smart-City Growth

  City planners can use CVI insights to evaluate where the greatest need for infrastructure improvement or new development support exists. For example, the index can highlight districts outside metros in India that are gaining slow but steady momentum, helping guide planning for infrastructure and utilities in those areas.

• Retail and Real Estate Site Selection

  Businesses looking to make sound investments in sites need to use signals of vitality. Dun & Bradstreet’s CVI correlates strongly with economic size and growth, and provides businesses with a level of comfort when shortlisting districts or cities for new stores, offices, or developments.

• Public Policy and Resource Allocation

  Governments and public agencies can use the index to better allocate their resources to areas that are either showing signs of stress or opportunity, whether that be an underutilised or neglected district or a growth corridor on the urban fringes. For example, CVI’s identification of rapidly strengthening economic nodes can inform where to prioritise supporting infrastructure.

• ESG and Sustainability Tracking

  Investors and corporations can use CVI data alongside ESG and sustainability metrics to evaluate the long-term prospects of a city and to judge medium and long-term resilience. Because the index assesses economic activity and infrastructure, it can assist those interested in evaluating site and partner sustainability, especially when combined with dedicated environmental and social datasets for ESG alignment.

Now that this City Vitality Index guide has covered how this meticulous framework functions, let us explore how you can utilise it to its full potential with tips and practices that will help you long-term.

• Use Diverse, High-Quality Data Sources

  A credible City Vitality Index (CVI) draws on satellite imagery, geospatial data, official statistics, and robust business and economic data. The broader and better the data sources, the more credible the index will be at representing real urban behaviours rather than localised or biased signals.

• Ensure Transparency in Scoring Methodology

  Trust is built with clear scoring rules. Stakeholders will want to understand better how all indicators are accounted for, grouped, and normalised before they move forward, trusting that the index is valid. A transparent framework will also help local and global governments, investors, and community planners access the results with clarity and avoid being misled by the index's outputs.

• Ground-Truth with Real Data

  Even the best datasets can be strengthened by on-the-ground knowledge. Where appropriate, field visits, stakeholder consultations, and local reviews can help users validate that the patterns seen in the index align with current conditions in the areas being analysed, especially in rapidly evolving or informal urban environments.

• Review Regularly to Respond to Real-Time Needs

  Cities are rapidly evolving. Regular reviews can reconcile index data with real-time changes in urban form, infrastructure development, and economic activity. Regular updates will provide organisations and governments with timely information so they can respond in a more agile way rather than rely on outdated data.

As urbanisation continues to grow and evolve, the next generation of city vitality indices is likely to shift further from static measurements to more dynamic intelligence and data. With emerging technologies and richer data streams, such indices are expected to become more predictive, inclusive, and actionable. Here are some ways how that could come into play:

• ESG Integration

  Carbon impact, social outcomes, and governance capacity are at the forefront of ESG thinking. As ESG frameworks mature, many city vitality indices may increasingly be interpreted together with detailed environmental and social metrics, making them even more valuable for sustainable investments and policy coherence.

• AI Predictive Modelling

  Advanced predictive models have already ushered in a new era of forecasting in areas such as economic fluctuations and infrastructure demand. With richer data streaming and more optimised models, predictive modelling around urban vitality could become even more precise and proactive, offering early warnings and scenario analysis for planners and investors.

• Crowdsourced & Complementary Data

  In the broader analytics space, crowdsourced inputs from mobility applications, community platforms, and IoT devices are being explored to deepen insights into how cities function. Over time, such complementary data streams may be used alongside core vitality indices to provide hyperlocal and more real-time perspectives.

• Real-time Dashboards and Integrations

  Interactive dashboards and data integrations can make vital indicators more accessible to organisations. As data platforms evolve, city vitality measures can be plugged into planning, investing, and monitoring systems more seamlessly, helping users track trends alongside their own internal KPIs.

Use this guide as your roadmap to understanding and applying the City Vitality Index.

• Grasp the Fundamentals: Build a clear foundation of what the CVI measures and why it matters.

• Explore Applications: See how businesses, policymakers, and investors use CVI insights in real scenarios.

• Interpret & Use CVIs: Understand how results are generated and how to evaluate or integrate an index effectively.

• Track Emerging Trends: Stay aware of new technologies and methods shaping the future of vitality measurement.