A very talented artist’s rendering of D.C. in 2025. Photo by Kevin Harber. Jetsons photo via Wikipedia.

Dear future people of Washington: Congratulations! Your city is still one of the most competitive in the world, according to a future-predicting report from the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The report, commissioned by bike sponsoring company Citigroup, predicts that D.C. will be 14th most competitive city in 2025. 120 global cities were judged in a “holistic” way using eight categories: economic strength, physical capital, financial maturity, institutional character, social and cultural character, human capital, environmental and natural hazards and global appeal.

America’s capital is a good all-round performer. It scores particularly well in the categories institutional character (joint 4th), social and cultural character (joint 6th) and financial maturity (joint 32nd). The city is seen as one of the worst US cities in terms of traffic congestion and waiting times, and investment in physical capital (joint 31st) is currently not a priority. There has been a dramatic improvement in the telecommunications infrastructure, with a rise in broadband adoption and Wi-Fi spots, making Washington a “wired city to watch”. Education is a priority, but healthcare much less so, and relative to other cities Washington descends in the rankings on both counts. The capital, one of the wealthiest US cities, is still seen by Americans as one of the best places to live

At present, D.C. is ranked 17th on the Economist Intelligence Unit competitiveness scale.

In 2025, New York will still be number one, while Chicago will be number nine, according to the report. London, Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo round out the top five.

Too bad there’s no way to predict if the city’s problems detailed in the report, plus its broken Metro system, high cost of living and lack of cronuts, will be fixed in a decade.