The aeroplane has shrunk our planet - and enlarged our world. When you can have a breakfast meeting in Dubai, a lunch negotiation in London and make a deal over dinner in New York, it's clear human connection has transcended geographical borders.

Knight Frank has drawn a map of the world showing the number of first-class and business-class passengers travelling by air between each city. The closer the name of the city to another and the thicker the connecting line, the greater flow of passengers between them. The larger the size of the city name, the more first- and business-class passengers it handles. The closer to the centre of the graph, the more connected the city. Smaller sub-sets of well-connected cities are clustered together by colour. Typically, one hub city acts as a gateway to the rest - such as Miami to Latin America.

Image: The Wealth Report 2017, Knight Frank

London is the most dominant city hub by far. New York, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore, Washington DC, Tokyo and Guangzhou follow. If air travel is a measure of globalization, these are the world’s most globalized cities.

Additional Reading

♦ Hong Kong-Taipei, World’s Busiest Airline Route 3 Years In A Row, Why?
♦ For Me, Movement Defines Taipei
♦ These Cities Have the Least Affordable Housing

Original content can be found at the website of World Economic Forum.

♦ Chart of the Day: These cities are busiest for business travellers

This article is reproduced under the permission of World Economic Forum (WEF) and terms of Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 Unported License (“CCPL”). It presents the opinion or perspective of the original author / organization, which does not represent the standpoint of CommonWealth magazine.