The Economist magazine provides city guides to more than two dozen cities worldwide, as well as audio business guides and country briefings, all freely accessible.

The Economist is the only print publication I subscribe to, and is definitely one of the best magazines in the world. They also provide city guides and other resources on their website to more that two dozen cities and about 80 countries. If you are going to be travelling I highly recommend you check these out. More notes as follows:

• The city guides include what you would expect: sightseeing recommendations, nightlife, shopping, etc… They also have hotel and restaurant recommendations although these do seem to be more on the upscale side, so if you are looking for backpacking ideas or travelling on the cheap you might want to look elsewhere.
• What I like about these guides is that they are linked to the relevant stories on these cities/countries from the magazine, which makes it very easy to get to grips with all the current events in those places. This applies to both city guides and country briefings.
• The audio business guides are actually very fun to listen to from an anthropological perspective: what would Chinese business partners say if they want to reject an offer, what would Taxis in Beijing charge a foreigner, whether a tip is expected or not, etc.
• The guides are not downloadable documents or PDFs but rather browseable HTML pages.
• The cities: as of 3/3/2008: ATLANTA, BEIJING, BERLIN, BRUSSELS, BUENOS AIRES, CHICAGO, DUBAI, HONG KONG, JOHANNESBURG, LONDON, LOS ANGELES, MEXICO CITY, MILAN, MOSCOW, MUMBAI, NEW YORK, PARIS, SAN FRANCISCO, SAO PAULO, SHANGHAI, SINGAPORE, SYDNEY, TEL AVIV, TOKYO, TORONTO, WASHINGTON, DC, ZURICH.

I’ve had the idea for this posting for a long time, but have been stopping myself from publishing it — until today. I hope people find it useful.