The 100 cities where to start a business in 2018

Toulouse, Nantes and Bordeaux on the podium for business

Toulouse, Nantes and Bordeaux form a nice podium, in line with the demographic evolution of recent years. Montpellier, Rennes and Lyon are close behind, followed closely by Angers, Aix-Marseille and Toulon.

With the exception of Angers, whose performance deserves to be highlighted, this top 100 list of cities where it is good to do business shows the domination of large metropolises, often located not far from the sea, which have a number of advantages. Whether you count the number of really active competitiveness clusters or the number of companies working in the high-tech sector, these cities score a few notches higher than the other cities.

The 10 indicators of the "I do" ranking

This Express survey covers the 100 most populous provincial cities. To compare them, we used the INSEE concept of "urban area," i.e., the central city and all the municipalities that depend on it, even if they are far from it. This is the best way to measure the size of a catchment area.

The 35 indicators in the survey were all collected from an official source and then divided into three themes: "I live", "I work" and "I undertake".

For each indicator, cities were assigned a rank based on their results. As with the baccalaureate, all indicators were weighted according to their importance to arrive at the thematic rankings.

For the "I do" ranking:

- 2 concern employment and wages: the change in the number of jobs between 2005 and 2015 (by employment zone, Insee, coef 5) and the average wage (Banque de France, 2016, coef 4).

- 3 affect business creation: the rate of business creation in 2016 (Insee, coef 4) as well as the 2016/2015 evolution of business creation and business failures (Agence France Entrepreneurs, coef 2 and 3).

- 5 focus on economic attractiveness: The number of university courses in 2015-2016 (counted by the L'Etudiant database, coef 5); the number of competitiveness clusters in 2017 (government website, coef 5); the share of companies in high-tech sectors in 2015 (Acoss, coef 5); the surface area of premises started between 2014 and 2017 in m² per 1,000 inhabitants (Ministry of Housing, coef 2) and hotel capacity (number of beds in the urban area as of 1/1/2017, Insee, coef 2).

Going further:

The 2018 list of winners by the Express: https://lentreprise.lexpress.fr/creation-entreprise/le-palmares-2018-des-villes-ou-il-fait-bon-entreprendre_1985485.html

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