Where is the world's most hi-tech city? (And it's not San Francisco …)

Twitter and Uber may be based in San Francisco, but Santiago's 'Chilecon Valley' and the South Korean capital Seoul could both make claims

Before long, Santiago could be a city full of electric vehicles charged by "smart" power grids, many of them driving on highways equipped with traffic-reducing automated variable toll pricing. Perhaps a new arrival to the Chilean capital would go for the chance to found a technology company, incentivised by programmes like the state-backed, foreigner-friendly Start-Up Chile, in "Chilecon Valley". And perhaps they'll stay for the capital's reputation boasting the most advanced public transit system in Latin America.

Or they might opt for Africa instead of South America, to take advantage of the assistance offered by organisations like SmartXchange in Durban. Not only does South Africa's third largest city now have an increasingly tech-savvy middle class population, it has schools like the Durban University of Technology, whose Urban Futures Centre is even developing technological solutions to the common challenges of drug use, security and policing strategy. If these succeed, Durban, like Santiago, may count itself among the highest-tech cities sooner than the rest of the world could imagine.