(FORTUNE Magazine) – 1 Hong Kong For fast-moving dealmakers and business people, Hong Kong's proximity to China is the huge plus. It is a two-hour plane ride to Shanghai, three to Beijing, and, if the hot city of Guangzhou is your destination, three hours by car along a new tollway built by Hong Kong entrepreneur extraordinaire Gordon Wu, 58. For Western companies, Hong Kong's role as a gateway to China is, of course, much more than a takeoff point. It can be the key to unlocking the China puzzle since so many of the business folk you meet in the Crown Colony can open doors in China through a network of contacts and distant relatives. Tag along with lawyer Victor Chu on one of his many trips to China, and you may well have police escorts clearing the road for you. Chu can help in other ways. "If you have a problem in China, legal recourse is only one of the many channels I would use," he says. A Hong Kong base comes at a price, an exorbitant one actually. Commercial and residential rents are among the highest in the world. Says Frank Martin, president of the local American Chamber of Commerce: "We used to do a rental survey. We've given up. It's a moving target that changes too rapidly."

2 New York If you believe in the information economy, then New York is ground zero: All three television networks, the advertising industry, and the media monsters such as Bertelsmann, News Corp., Viacom, and Time Warner, owner of the company that publishes FORTUNE, make their homes here. Viacom, flush with swallowing movie and publishing giant Paramount, just decided to stay put after the city offered tax breaks equal to $3,000 per job. Keeping corporate giants in the city has become a priority for mayor Rudolph Giuliani. He's been largely successful in anchoring the financial community here. With state help, he's also willing to pump more money into Broadway and other elements of New York's bountiful cultural scene. The overall crime rate is down 14%. In fact, New York is safer than Miami or Atlanta in terms of being a victim of violence. The subways and buses are more than adequate; there are three area airports to choose from. Problems? The education system is still a mess, and New York's high tax rates are going to have to come down if the Big Apple is ever to offer a true welcome mat to business.

3 London With the highest concentration of FORTUNE Global 500 companies outside of Tokyo, London can lay claim to the most deregulated business environment in Europe, a highly educated, English-speaking work force, and one of the world's most extensive networks of city trains, above and below ground. Despite its huge population and its fair share of the poor and homeless, London is still safe and clean.

Culturally, it's hard to find a city to beat London. Helped by the some $650 million a year the government pours into the local arts, the city has more than 150 theaters and cabarets. It also boasts more than 100 universities and colleges. Another big plus for London is the ease with which you can leave it. Connected to the rest of the world by more direct flights than any other city, London now also offers direct rail links to Brussels and Paris through the Channel Tunnel. The journey takes three hours to Paris, from city center to city center. Eurostar, which runs the trains, expects two million business travelers in the first year of business. And guess what: The food is getting better. You don't have to eat toad-in-the-hole. Try one of the capital's trendy new restaurants.

4 Atlanta This city's charms used to be a low-cost, pro-business environment and great air service. Now it has all that and more. A powerful combination of marketing and communications companies such as Coca-Cola, CNN, Cox Enterprises, BellSouth, and Scientific-Atlanta has given the city a window on the world. Even in Baghdad, they know Atlanta. And now the city is spreading its wings. BellSouth, for instance, just signed an agreement to develop phone systems in China. And the Southern Co., a utility holding company, is taking on projects in South America. The 1996 Olympic city created a remarkable 86,900 net new jobs last year, and most of them are permanent. The Olympics themselves will add 80,000 temporary positions. This is a great inland port, at the crossroads of major highways and railroads, and possessing a powerful magnet with Hartsfield Airport, which recently opened up a new international terminal. One result: Atlanta was selected over Miami as the entry port for fresh flowers freighted by the ton from South America. Although downtown Atlanta has all the charm of a strip mall, its suburbs are attractive and affordable, and the surrounding countryside provides ample diversion.

5 Chicago Being stuck in the middle of a huge continent made transport vital to the Windy City, and it remains so: "Any way you want to ship something, you can do it. We have the largest airport in the world. Rails to both coastlines. We even have our own port," says Ronald Gidwitz, CEO of beauty products maker Helene Curtis. The highway grid is still a never-ending renovation project. One of the city's most important exports may be economists. The University of Chicago's free-marketeers have influenced economic policy worldwide. Chicago's blend of Midwestern work ethic and big-city culture makes it an attractive place for businesses and employees. "Generally, those outside the U.S. think of it as a country of two coasts with nothing in between. Chicago is a large and thriving city with lots to offer," says Cyrus Freidheim, vice chairman of Booz Allen & Hamilton. This includes a downtown beach, an art museum second to none, great ethnic restaurants, and the most loyal baseball fans in the world. Yes, it has the usual urban catastrophes in housing, education, and joblessness. But casino development in nearby Joliet is targeted to provide jobs for the inner city.

6 Singapore The government is quick to roll out the red carpet for companies it wants. Most of them are high-tech types like Whirlpool, which put its regional design and engineering center here in mid-1992. Singapore's remarkable Economic Development Board, charged with persuading foreign business to set up shop here, snared Whirlpool by offering to pay for half the training costs of the engineers the company hired locally. That includes travel and housing when Whirlpool flies them back to Evansville, Indiana, for training. Not long ago, a team from the EDB dropped in on Whirlpool CEO David Whitwam in his office in Benton Harbor, Michigan, to make sure Whirlpool was getting all the help it needed. The same government is much less solicitous toward other things. As recent events demonstrate, foreigners can expect no immunity from a judicial system that hangs convicted drug offenders and canes lesser criminals. Nor does Asia's general liberalism toward sex apply here. The government will insist on viewing any videos you carry in or send for pornographic content, possibly edit them, and charge you a fee for this privilege.

7 Toronto A surprising choice, given its high taxes, squeaky-clean Toronto makes the list by virtue of being one of the most pleasant cities of its size. Its critics carp that the town is pleasant to the point of somnolence. Toronto stands to benefit from NAFTA and a strengthening economy in general. A sluggish recovery from the last economic dip left the city with an 11.1% unemployment rate in 1993, while metro-area office space has an alarming 18.5% vacancy rate. Toronto is known for its diversified business climate and also as a mining center, with more global mining corporate head offices than any other city in the world. The city is a large exporter of cars, trucks, and parts, owing to a significant GM presence. Yet there has been recent growth in "new economy" knowledge-intensive sectors such as biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, and medical devices. The climate is cosmopolitan: the United Nations has called metro Toronto the most multicultural city in the world. The city has an excellent education system and work force. If you're worried about crime, here's a selling point -- Toronto is the safest major metro area in North America.

8 San Francisco The Bay City has bulled its way through the recession that devastated other parts of California. Leading the charge: local investment banks, such as Montgomery Securities, that have used their natural stronghold in high-tech deals in nearby Silicon Valley to expand into financing for all kinds of emerging growth companies, from retailing to health care. World-class universities -- Stanford, Berkeley, and the University of California at San Francisco -- continually pump new blood into a remarkably well-educated work force. Downtown, a former warehouse district has emerged as "Multimedia Gulch," a hot area for startup software companies that draw on the city's legions of programmers, artists, musicians, and filmmakers. The waterside business district is also enjoying a brisk revitalization, sprouting condos and office towers aplenty. The land rush was precipitated by the removal of an unloved freeway after it was rocked by the 1989 earthquake. Now the city is building a new street-car line alongside the bay. The Gap wants to construct a 17-story building on one of the last open waterfront parcels, close to its current headquarters. The office vacancy rate, around 12%, is less than half that of Los Angeles.

9 Frankfurt In many ways, Frankfurt is Europe's most Americanized city, with both the advantages and disadvantages of the American model. Downtown is marked by towers for the big German banks: two for Deutsche Bank, one for Dresdner, and a new one rising for Commerzbank. But when the offices let out at 6 p.m., the streets empty. Businessmen live in leafy suburbs, often only 30 minutes away by the autobahn. "This is a suburban city," explains Hartmut Schwesinger, of the Business and Economic Development Corp., who himself lives 19 kilometers out of town in Bad Homburg. "And of course, any international city will have its problems with crime." Frankfurt is the German city with the most varied supply of foreign schools, including a French lycee, an American high school, and their Japanese, Korean, and Greek counterparts. Compared with other German cities, Frankfurt welcomes foreigners, who compose almost 30% of the population. Turks, Italians, and others do much of the city's dirty work. But a big number of international professionals also live here -- as does Germany's largest Jewish community, numbering 7,000.MiamiThis city is fast becoming the de facto capital of Latin America. Currently 41% of all U.S. exports to the region travel through Miami.

10 Miami The city is also growing into a service center for Latin America, providing banking, telecommunications, engineering, and medical services. Miami has developed strong ties to other parts of the globe too. France, Norway, and Britain lead in total capital invested, and numerous European companies have regional headquarters here, often in an effort to triangulate their North American, Latin American, and European operations. More than 50 Asian multinationals are also present. Years of catering to retirees have put Miami in an excellent position to offer medical services. Four hospitals and a medical school are developing a Latin American patient referral network. The city's fortunes still rise and fall with tourism, a $7 billion industry. Last year's murder of five tourists prompted an international outcry, and the city is scrambling for solutions. So far there have been no repeats. Miami is keeping its fingers crossed for December's Summit of the Americas, which 34 heads of state will attend.

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