Quantifying how resilient a city is to climate change and its attendant threats can be difficult, but a London-based property company might have performed the most comprehensive analysis to date.

And the subsequent report from Grosvenor, a real estate investment group, ranks 50 of the world’s biggest cities based on how resilient they are to the threats of climate change. Topping the list were three Canadian cities, led by Toronto. At the bottom were several cities in developing nations like India, China and Brazil.

Grosvenor’s findings, based on over 160 data sets from 2012 and 2013 from sources like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and UNESCO, determined resiliency by comparing a city’s “vulnerability” with its “adaptive capacity.”

Vulnerability was determined by assessing a city’s climate threats (like sea level rise), environmental degradation (like pollution and land use overconsumption from sprawl), resources, infrastructure and internal threats like community tensions.

Adaptive capacity – a city’s ability to stop or mitigate threats – was determined by assessing things like institutions, including good technical universities, municipal disaster plans, access to funding and governance (defined here through things like transparency and accountability).

Grosvenor acknowledges its analysis – presented last week at a conference hosted by the Urban Land Institute in Vancouver, British Columbia – is financially motivated. Richard Barkham, global research director for the group, said in an interview that the company hoped the report would “help us and clients invest sensibly.” But he added that the report’s findings could provide numerous benefits for governments and city planners looking to protect cities and their populations from the threats of climate change.

A plus for business

“From a real estate investor’s perspective, resilience allows cities to preserve capital values and generate sustainable rental income in the long term,” he said.

In other words, adapting to climate change is good business for cities. But some are doing better at this than others.

The top three cities – Toronto; Vancouver; and Calgary, Alberta – exhibit an excellent balance of economic dynamism, good governance and access to cutting-edge technology. Meanwhile, London, a traditionally reliable real estate investment, came in 18th, with community tensions and a lack of affordable housing overwhelming its strong institutions, transportation and governance. The top American cities were Chicago and Pittsburgh in fourth and fifth, respectively. Washington, D.C., came in ninth.

“There’s no perfect city, and they all have threats,” Barkham added, “but I think there’s a really enlightened approach to urban planning that you see in Canada.”

All the different variables Grosvenor factored in were measured equally, meaning things like vulnerability to sea-level rise were given the same weight as access to international funding. Its approach, particularly the attention paid to governance and the fact that developed cities dominated the top of the rankings, gave the appearance that Grosvenor’s methods may have contained a pro-democracy, Western bias, Barkham said.

But he added that he thought the report’s attention to governance was valuable in assessing a city’s resiliency.

“This might be an unpopular opinion, but we think in the longer term democracy, free speech and public accountability gives cities resilience because the popular pressure forces cities to respond,” Barkham said.

Least resilient cities will grow fastest

This pressure from city dwellers themselves could be critical in building resiliency going forward for several reasons. Barkham noted that some of the least resilient cities in the research are also those where population is expected to grow fastest. In the future, cities are also likely to become more responsible for leading adaptation efforts themselves – independent of national or international leaders.

“Increasingly cities should be doing this themselves,” Barkham said. “If they wait around for the national government to do this, then they might be waiting too long, and I think cities are powerful enough to do this themselves.”

Sorrel Basher, a spokeswoman for Grosvenor, said the resiliency analysis could be something the group repeats every two or three years.

“We should be able to see how the different criteria change over this period and see if [cities] are becoming more resilient to climate change amongst other things,” Basher wrote in an email.