Throughout 2020 and 2021, our cities have thrived. Against impossible odds, communities banded together, hung out, made stuff. They displayed all the same energy and resilience and grassroots ingenuity that allowed them to spring up in the first place. They survived. And now we come to our annual ranking of the world’s coolest neighbourhoods. Just like we’ve done for the past three years, we took the results of our annual Time Out Index survey (which this year polled 27,000 city-dwellers) to our local editors and contributors. They then vetted the public vote against various criteria – food, fun, culture, community – and made their final picks. The result is a love letter to the city at its most joyful and surprising. | 