Beijing ranks 49th on list of millennial-friendly cities

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In news that will be of interest to the city's selfie-taking, brunch-frequenting 'snowflakes', Beijing is apparently the 49th-best city in the world for millennials. According to apartment search engine Nestpick’s 'Millennial City Ranking', we ranked 49th out of the 110 best cities to live out your freelancing, avocado-eating, Instagramming, Tinder-swiping, apartment-sharing years.

Berlin, Montreal, London, Amsterdam and Toronto made up the top five, with Beijing ranking as the second-best city in Asia behind Bangkok (42) and ahead of Kuala Lumpur (53), Hong Kong (57) and Taipei (62). In true petty fashion, we're also feeling pretty smug about well and truly beating out our southern rivals Shanghai, who only managed a ranking of 76.

Nestpick’s 2018 survey ranked 110 cities based on the major aspects of city life – jobs, housing, transport and tolerance – as well as things like good-quality nightlife and internet speed, with the weightings of each category being adjusted to reflect what's most important to millennials.

Beijing scored highly for employment, food and beer and was joint first place with Shanghai in terms of access to contraception. So, yeah, we can drink all the beers and we've got condoms for days. Where Beijing didn't score too well was festivals, internet speed (can't guess why) and LGBT friendliness, a metric which measures openness in the city, safety and legal rights, as well as attraction to LGBT travellers. With the recent removal of acclaimed gay romance Call Me By Your Name from the Beijing International Film Festival lineup, it's probably unsurprising (though highly disappointing).

Despite its mid-range ranking, we still think Beijing is a great city for millennials... although, of course, we might be a bit biased. There's a whole host of late-night activities, stuff to do on the cheap, Instagram-worthy locations and more. Those are the things millennials are supposed to like, right?

To check out the rankings for yourself, hit 'Read more'. 

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