The 25 most high-tech cities in the world

Cities are the way of the future.

In less than 35 years, the World Health Organization estimates that two-thirds of the world population will be living in urban areas. That's an additional 2.5 billion people. The cities that will flourish the most are those that rely on cutting-edge technologies and create opportunities for people to develop new ones.

To get a sense of which cities do that the best, Business Insider consulted 2thinknow, a research firm that specializes in analyzing innovative cities, to rank the most high-tech cities in the world.

The firm chose 10 factors related to technological advancement - including the number of patents filed per capita, startups, tech venture capitalists, ranking in other innovation datasets, and level of smartphone use - weighted them, and ranked a list of 85 cities accordingly.

If you want to know what the future will look like, these are the cities to keep an eye on.