Hamburg tops Smart City Index 2021 for third time

6 October 2021

Hamburg defends title as Germany's "smartest" city and scores in mobility category

The City of Hamburg has topped Germany's Smart City Index 2021 for the third consecutive year, the Bitkom e. V. digital association announced Wednesday (October 6, 2021). The Hanseatic city prevailed over 80 rival cities and improved its score to 88.1 out of a possible 100 points (2020: 79.2 points) followed by Cologne (79.3), Karlsruhe (73.2) and Munich (72.7). The Hanseatic city achieved the best partial ranking in the mobility category (98.56 points). Naturally, the ranking puts Hamburg in a great position for the upcoming ITS World Congress for Intelligent Mobility, which is expected to attract up to 10,000 trade visitors next week (October 11-15).

Hamburg scores with digitalisation strategy

"The renewed top ranking confirms our holistic approach to shaping digital transformation jointly i.e., society, administration and business. We started using innovative technologies early to benefit the city," said Christian Pfromm, Chief Digital Officer (CDO). "Thus, the Smart City Index is both a recognition and an incentive," he added.

The senate adopted a comprehensive digital strategy in January targeting all areas of community life. The concept of digital spaces addresses the interdisciplinary and interdepartmental nature of digitialisation projects to open up a perspective for society as a whole. Hamburg scored maximum points in the ranking's mobility category in terms of smart traffic management, last-mile logistics, multimodality and sharing services.

Methodology of ranking

Bitkom's researchers examined 81 German cities with at least 100,000 inhabitants. Some 133 parameters in the five categories of administration, IT infrastructure, energy/environment, mobility and society were examined for the index.
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