Amongst the various plans people make, one is moving from one city to another and start a new life. This idea has become popular especially among young graduates. However the most important aspects to take into account while taking this important decision are the work and the place where you intend to live. Suppose you have already got the job, now comes the most complicated part and that causes thousands of headaches: rent a place to live.

If we rely on the generalized opinions and what can be found on the Internet, we will see that everything leads to almost the same, where cities such as London, New York or Tokyo always appear as the most expensive in the world. But thanks to research by RENT Cafe, you can have a little more light on this aspect, since it focuses specifically on the prices of rents within the 30 most important and attractive cities to live in the world – From $ 8.50 per square meter to more than $ 58.

First we must define what are these 30 cities. Thanks to the work of Institute of Urban Strategies of the Mori Memorial Foundation we have the ‘Global Power City Index‘. This research classifies each city in terms of its attractiveness based on six main criteria: economy, research and development, cultural interaction, habitability, environment and accessibility.

And the index is as follows:

As we see, London is the city with the highest rating within this research, since it has the highest offer within the six criteria that we already mentioned. Followed by London are New York, Tokyo, Paris, and Singapore completing the top 5.

Now, within the 30 most important cities, how is the rental situation?

This is where RENTCafé’s research comes in, which set a rent of 1,500 dollars a month, and based on this, we can now know how much space we can access depending on the city, with other interesting results.

In the following graph (Source: Statista) we can clearly see the size of the apartment, in square meters, which we will have access to in the different cities with a budget of 1,500 dollars per month. It should be noted that the image is limited to the first 25 cities.

As we can see, the price per square meter in Istanbul would be just 8.50 dollars, so $ 1,500 would give us access to a comfortable apartment of 176 square meters.

In contrast to Manhattan, where the square meter has a cost of $ 58.34, so we would only have the possibility of having a micro apartment of 26 square meters. That is, the size of an apartment in Istanbul is equal to the size of almost seven apartments in Manhattan.

Other conclusions we can draw is that for those $ 1,500 we can have three times more space in Shanghai than in Los Angeles, or that the price per square meter is five times more expensive in San Francisco than in Berlin. On the other hand, of the 30 cities covered by the study, four belong to Western Europe, which compete with Manhattan, San Francisco and Hong Kong to have the highest prices per square meter.

Additional reading: cost to raise a child in top 10 countries

Another interesting point is that outside the United States and Canada, no other city in America appears in the list, this despite of the fact that some of them have the lowest prices, but here we must remember that we are talking about cities capable of offering a Good life quality. On the other hand, Spain appears twice in the list thanks to Madrid and Barcelona, cities where the square meter has a price of $17.01 and $20.99 respectively.

If you wish to analyze these 30 cities from another perspective, the map alongside summarizes the study in a magnificent and clear way.