Workpackage 6 and 7 Workshop

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• Workpackage 6 and 7 Workshop

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Questions for Discussion

• How do we interpret conurbation in our
  countries?
• Which conurbations in our countries would we
  identify?
• How should we administer the questionnaire?
• Whom should we approach first?
• How should we ensure that the answers are correct
  and representative?
• How shall we ensure completion of the
  questionnaire?

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Feedback Group 1

• Q1. How do we interpret conurbation in our
  countries?
• First of all we agreed that the notion of
  conurbation is not easy to adopt. It is not a
  definition that politicians/planners use.
• We identified two possible models
• a big city or several big cities with no gap in
  between a large metropolitan area
• a big city with several smaller surrounding
  cities, whose inhabitants go to the big centre
  for shopping, working, events, etc.
• An example of the first model could be Greater
  Manchester, it is surrounded by several cities
  that once were separated but now merge each
  other. There are several examples in Norway,
  Cologne or Hamburg could be examples in Germany,
  Milan in Italy, and the south-east region
  (developed around the harbour) in Malta.
• Then we tried to think to what we really need in
  terms of providing indicators. Where are the
  major problems? In cities or in conurbations?
  What are our aims? Helping local politicians?
  National politicians?

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Feedback Group 1

• Q2. Which conurbations in our country would we
  identify?
• Malta La Valletta, South- South East (as
  conurbation)
• Germany Ruhr (as conurbation), Frankfurt (as
  conurbation), Cologne, Munich
• UK Greater Manchester, Greater Glasgow, Cardiff,
  London
• Norway Greater Oslo, Oslo, Thromsø
• Italy Greater Milan, Rome, Palermo

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Feedback Group 1

• Q3. How should we administer the questionnaire?
• Whom should we approach first?
• It depends on the countries. In small ones we
  could approach even the mayors of the cities, in
  large one we could approach the directors of
  Public Health institutions for the cities.
• How we should ensure that the answers are correct
  and representative?
• We can compare the results with national
  indicators and check for correctness of data with
  the sources they used to fill in the
  questionnaire.
• How shall we ensure completion of the
  questionnaire?
• It is up to us. However it would be useful to
  have a letter of presentation of the project and
  a general request for completion. It would be
  very useful to have the possibility to fill in
  the questionnaire on web.

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Feedback Group 2

• The resonance of the term 'conurbation'.
• No understanding of the term in our group - used
  'city' or 'metropolitan area' but the concept was
  understood, so we suggested that the project
  should define the term and then ask
  representatives from each country to match it to
  their own countries.
• Our group could think of areas to identify for
  WP7, and depending on the areas (see next point)
  could think of people to contact.
• The main concerns were around relative size of
  areas, for eg. in Slovenia and Hungary - there
  was one large 'conurbation' and then the next
  biggest settlement was much, much smaller and so
  the issue of 'what sort of urban areas did we
  want?' came up - i.e. if we wanted a large and a
  small (as Slovenia and Hungary would have to
  have) then same could be done in other countries
  to give some comparative data - so for Turkey -
  could have two large areas (Izmir/ Ankara), but
  could also have one large area (Ankara) and a
  smaller urban area, as according to WHO, Turkey
  has over 80 cities. So, do we want the two
  biggest, or is there the chance in France, UK,
  etc. to look at both large and smaller cities to
  look at data availability to give more
  comparative data to other European countries?

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Feedback Group 3

• 1. How do we interpret conurbation in our
  countries?
• One consistent term should be applied throughout
  the project (either conurbation or agglomeration)
• The group felt that a conurbation was perhapsmore
  than simply a city and that it was more of an
  urban community, that has shared administrative
  tasks such as transportation and sanitation. The
  group also felt that a conurbation could consist
  of multiple cities that have natural linkages
  between one-another.
• The group contained partners from France, UK,
  Netherlands and Belgium
• 2. Which conurbations in our countries would we
  identify?
• Examples of conurbations in the partner countries
  included
• UK Greater Manchester, Greater Glasgow, Greater
  London, Cardiff
• BE Charleroi, Ghent
• NE Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Hague, Utrecht
  (select 2 of these options)
• FR Montpellier, Bordeaux
• 3. How should we administer the questionnaire?
• The questionnaire should be administered using
  the ountry coordinators from each member state,
  who should be asked to explore the opportunities
  that are available through their own personal
  networks and colleagues.
• These contacts and the contacts from other
  established projects such as ECHI and ISARE
  should be contacted first.
• The group also decided that the partners in the
  EURO URHIS project were collectively responsible
  for ensuring that the information provided by
  their own personal contacts was reliable and
  representative.
• The group also decided that the partners in the
  EURO URHIS project were collectively responsible
  for ensuring the completion of the questionnaire.
• Further points for consideration The group
  discussed issues around the availability of data
  and whether criteria should be developed in
  assisting the choice of conurbations to use for
  the project. Perhaps it was not always correct
  to choose the easiest option (via personal
  contacts) and that a more rigid system could be
  applied?

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Feedback Group 4

• Q1 How do we interpret conurbation in our
  countries?
• Firstly we discussed shortly differences between
  metropolis and conurbation. The result of our
  discussion was that these 2 terms are more or
  less synonyms.
• The definition of conurbation in our group
• Conurbation can either be 2 or 3 bigger cities
  closely linked to each other or 1 big city and
  several smaller cities and villages surrounding
  this city.
• The conurbation should fulfil several inclusion
  criteria. The city (or tows) should be
• culturally related e.g. having common centres
  where people go for culture (theatres,
  cinemas...)
• sharing local newspaper
• having public transport connected
• having police connected
• having healthcare system connected ... etc.

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Feedback Group 4

• Q2 Which conurbation in our countries would we
  identify?
• Poland (2 cities)
• Silesio ? Katowice 15 surrounding towns
• Three towns ? Gdansk Sopot Gdynia
• Czech republic (2 cities)
• Ostrava Karvina ? industrial area
• Liberec Jablonec or Pilzen region ?
  culturally closely related cities
• Slovak republic (2 cities)
• Bratislava surroundings ? capital
  surroundings
• Kosice Presov cities ? second largest city
  surroundings
• Latvia (1 city)
• Riga surroundings
• Lithuania (1 city)
• Kaunas surroundings
• co-ordinators, so that they are able to approach
  and motivate key persons in the country for
  co-operation on this project

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Feedback Group 4

• Q3 How should we administer the questionnaire?
• Whom should we approach first?
• firstly we are going to approach ourselves...
  (mainly we are representatives of relevant public
  health organisation)
• then municipalities / local authorities
  (organisation which have and also handle the
  data)
• offices for health statistics information (e.g.
  national or local institutes for statistics)
• public health centres / institutes
• universities (e.g. public health departments)
• non-governmental organisations (healthy cities,
  anti-tobacco movement etc.)
• ministries (ministry of health care, ministry of
  social affairs and family, environmental health
  departments...)
• we are also going to check the relevant grey
  literature
• How should we ensure that the answers are correct
  and representative?
• we are going to rely on official country reports
• as national co-ordinators we know best the key
  persons within the field of interests, so we have
  to rely on personal contacts and expertise of
  national co-ordinators
• How shall we ensure completion of the
  questionnaires?
• part of the data is already available, i.e.
  socio-demographic data, information from official
  health statistics and consequently related parts
  of the questionnaire can be easily filled in
  regarding the more hidden data we have to rely
  on national