The City as Experience: The "Experience Dividend" That Determines Talent Retention

At seven in the morning on Dubai's Marina Walk. Joggers approach, with the morning light over the bay behind them; the corner café is already open, staff wiping down tables, preparing for the first wave of customers. Not far away, a new public art installation has just been unveiled, and children play by the fountain. This is not the city seen through tourists' lenses, but part of residents' everyday lives. Today, as remote work makes "place" more flexible than ever before, a subtle but profound shift is taking place: people choose a city not because of how many museums, restaurants, or Fortune 500 headquarters it has, but because of what it feels like to live there—that tangible, day-to-day experience.

In past decades, the formula for attracting talent was simple: high salary, benefits, career prospects. Companies competed for elite talent by making office environments more comfortable and compensation more competitive. But a study released by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) shows that this formula is outdated. In this survey covering more than 80 cities worldwide and nearly 17,000 professionals, the researchers sought to answer one ultimate question: What truly makes people want to stay in a city, and stay in a job?

The answer lies in "experience."

From "Having" to "Experiencing"

London, Paris, Tokyo—these megacities possess unrivaled cultural resources. They have the finest opera, the oldest museums, the most Michelin-starred restaurants. But the research revealed a counterintuitive finding: there is a negative correlation between a city's per-capita density of amenities and job satisfaction. In other words, having the most amenities does not equal having the happiest workers. The reason is simple: crowding, commute costs, distance, and stress greatly diminish the real experience of these amenities. You might live next door to a museum and not visit it once in a year.

What truly determines whether people like their jobs is their experience of daily city life—whether they can walk to a park on weekends, whether the corner bakery suits their taste, whether they can easily find a vibrant bar at night, whether public spaces make them want to linger. Researchers call this quality of experience the "Experience Dividend."

What the Data Reveals

The survey tested 11 dimensions of city life, including economic opportunity, housing, transportation, healthcare, education, public space, weather, safety, government services, social cohesion, and everyday life experience. The results showed that "experience quality" ranked first alongside economic opportunity, with its influence exceeding that of housing, transportation, and even safety. In cities where workers are satisfied with their experience, 78% of employees say they like their jobs; in cities where the experience is unsatisfactory, that figure plummets to 48%—a full 30-percentage-point gap, independent of any traditional talent factors.More surprisingly, this dividend has a decisive impact on young people. Among employees under 25, the gap in retention intention between high-experience and low-experience cities is as large as 20 percentage points; among those over 50, that gap is only 6 percentage points. The younger generation is willing to choose a city for a better life experience, and equally willing to stay loyal in order to remain in that experience. The flexibility of mobile work, ironically, has pushed "quality of life" to the front of their career choices.

Who is winning this dividend?

The research names several cities overlooked by traditional enterprises: Dubai, Bengaluru, Kuala Lumpur, Riyadh, and Baku. These places may not have the world's most luxurious facilities, but they are actively improving the daily experience of urban life—adding pedestrian walkways, activating neighborhood culture, investing in the nighttime economy, and making public spaces truly become citizens' "second living room." Meanwhile, traditional megacities may actually find themselves at a disadvantage in terms of experience.

This dividend is not exclusive to affluent cities. Even after controlling for GDP per capita, the relationship between experience and job satisfaction remains robust. Nor is it the preserve of the tech industry. The same pattern holds in manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, and other sectors. Even in the IT industry, where remote work is most flexible, the gap in job satisfaction between high-experience and low-experience cities is as high as 20 percentage points. This shows that, no matter which industry you are in, the lived experience of a city is quietly shaping your relationship with your work.

Implications for Businesses and Cities

For businesses, the "experience dividend" is changing site-selection logic. Traditional location decisions focus on costs, logistics, tax incentives, and the "obvious" star cities. But the truly critical question is: where are people willing to live long-term? The answer increasingly depends on whether a city offers a tangible, improving daily experience. Cities where people can see life moving forward are winning the long-term commitment of talent.

For cities, the "experience dividend" redefines the core of urban competitiveness. Parks, public spaces, cultural venues, nightlife, walkability—these soft benefits once dismissed as "afterthoughts" of economic development have now become hard metrics. Investing in daily experience is not a luxury; it is a core strategy for cities to attract capital and talent. The world is entering an era where "experience is the economy," and competition between cities is becoming a competition over the quality of life itself.

Conclusion

A city has never been just a place to work; it is a vessel for life. When people jog on morning trails, meet friends in cafés, and watch children play in twilight plazas, what they gain is not merely convenience, but a sense of belonging—the feeling that "this city is me." The experience dividend tells us that the city of the future should be one where people wake up every morning and feel, "It's good to be here." And that, perhaps, is the ultimate criterion for who will win the battle for talent.