The thorough revision of the Urban Audit project

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The thorough revision of the Urban Audit project

• Berthold Feldmann
• Eurostat
• berthold.feldmann_at_ec.europa.eu

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Structure of the talk

• Why a fundamental reform?
• Major elements of the reform
• Time table

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Why do we need a thorough revision of the Urban
Audit?
Chapter 1
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Dimensions of the Urban Audit

• More than 300 variables collected from Member
  States
• Cover many demographic, economic and social
  aspects in European cities
• Data collections
• Exhaustive collection every three years 2004,
  2007, 2010, 2013
• Annual data collection of 38 variables since 2010
• Three spatial units
• 369 core cities
• larger urban zones (including the city
  hinterland)
• sub-city information (reduced dataset)

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Current situation of Urban Audit

• The Urban Audit project was started more than 10
  years ago as a pilot project (58 cities)
• It has grown to an ambitious voluntary data
  collection in order to give a comprehensive
  statistical picture of urban life in more than
  350 cities with over 300 indicators
• The Urban Audit data has been intensively used in
  EU Policy context and analyses
• Urban Audit has been very useful in defining
  harmonised concepts for core cities, larger urban
  zones and sub-city districts
• Overall response rate only 60

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Major challenges in the Urban Audit

• Data delivery delays
• As a consequence to these delays of data inflow,
  the quality control, which needs a critical mass
  of data, is very delayed
• Comparability of the data is questioned by some
• This reduces the usability of the data for
  political analysis
• Missing data is a problem for all countries
• Different gaps in different countries due to
  diverging social and statistical history
• Estimations required some countries estimate a
  lot, others dont estimate at all

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Part of estimation in data delivery
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Where the Urban Audit data comes from

• Inevitably a complex data collection system

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Several Stakeholder meetings in 2010/11

• Peer Review summer 2010
• Conclusion Actions are needed to raise awareness
  about the data collection and to reduce the
  amount of missing data
• Working Party meeting September 2010
• Conclusion there are a still several unresolved
  challenges related to the Urban Audit data
  collection
• High level stakeholder meeting December 2010
• Conclusion The Urban Audit should be continued.
  DG REGIO is ready to continue providing
  substantial financial support
• Think tank meeting March 2011
• Conclusion The proposed thorough revision of the
  Urban Audit found unanimous support

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Ten proposed actions of the Urban Audit revision
Chapter 2
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1. Create a consistent list of cities

• The current list of cities is over-complex
  standard list, additional list for some
  countries, large city Audit etc.
• New target include all European cities with more
  than 50 000 inhabitants in the Urban Audit
• Advantage Thanks to the revision of the degree
  of urbanisation, LF and EU-SILC will provide
  country level values for all cities
• These figures can be used in combination with
  other information, primarily administrative data,
  to improve the quality of the city specific
  estimates

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2. Create consistent spatial definitions of cities

• Eurostat and DG REGIO are currently conducting a
  comprehensive analysis of all European core
  cities and Larger Urban Zones (LUZ), based on the
  newly developed urban-intermediate-rural typology
  
• This approach, based on objective criteria, will
  significantly increase the comparability of Urban
  Audit statistics
• As a result, there will be a list of European
  core cities (urban centres) and LUZ
  (agglomerations) following a harmonised
  methodology

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3. Create a focused list of indicators

• Currently we collect 40 variables annually and
  330 variables every three years
• In order to ease the burden on data suppliers, we
  will collect in future 85 variables annually and
  175 variables every five years
• Policy relevance and response rate were the
  guiding principles for deleting or keeping
  variables

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4. Revise the frequency of data collections

• There is a trade-off between response burden and
  timeliness of data
• Eurostat proposes to increase the scope of the
  annual data collection (timely data)
• Decrease the frequency of the exhaustive data
  collection to every five years
• With a significantly shorter list than at the
  current stage
• These measures will considerably reduce the
  burden on NSIs

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5. Reach an overall 80 response rate

• Reduce the number of required variables by
  deleting those with a poor response rate
• Increase the number of centrally collected
  variables, i.e. data put together by Eurostat
  from existing Europe wide source (EEA, Urban
  Atlas of DG REGIO etc.)
• Foster estimations of the data suppliers
• Grants for estimating missing data
• Create a Board of Urban Audit Advisers that gives
  advice on estimation techniques
• Collect at least data for all urban areas in each
  country (using the new degree of urbanisation)

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6. Improve the data validation process
7. Increase direct cooperation with cities

• Fine tuning of Eurostats validation tools
• Encourage validation by the data suppliers

• After each collection round, the data set for
  each city should be sent to the individual cities
  
• Cities will be asked to confirm or improve the
  data

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8. Improve communication with users

• Restructure the public Eurostat database
  (Eurobase), taking more into account the user
  perspective and the possibilities offered by the
  data explorer
• Intensify the dialogue with the cities involved

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9. Increase awareness of urban statistics

• A joint Eurostat / DG REGIO publication on the
  "State of European Cities" should be launched
  starting 2012
• This publication should have descriptive and
  analytical elements
• It should have an annual frequency

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10. Exploit synergies with other statistical data
collections

• Harmonised definitions shall be used as much as
  possible to support the analysis of functional
  regions, metropolitan regions, coastal regions,
  etc.
• Using the new degree of urbanisation concept,
  statistics can be produced for all urban areas in
  a country
• These figures can then be used as benchmarks for
  city specific estimations

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Next steps and time table
Chapter 3
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Next steps in the Urban Audit revision

• DM discussion May 2011
• Meeting of all nationalUrban Audit
  coordinators June 2011
• Present strategy at ESS-Com. Oct 2011
• Implementation Jan 2012

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• Thank you for
• your attention!

Any Questions ?