/ EUROPEAN COMMISSION
EUROSTAT
Directorate E: Sectoral and regional statistics
Unit E-4: Regional statistics and geographical information

E4/REG/2016/51
(Only available in EN)

Working Group on Regional, Urban and Rural Development statistics
to be held in Luxembourgon 17.10.2016 and 18.10.2016

City Statistics

Item 5.1on the agenda

Document available on CircaBC.

The members of the Regional, Urban and Rural Development Statistics Working Group are asked:

  • To note the gaps in data availability

1.Introduction

The so called "Urban Audit Pilot Project", the first attempt to collect comparable indicators on European cities, was conducted in 1999 by the Commission. The past fifteen years brought along many improvements. Eurostat has been continuously making efforts to increase the quality of the data – coverage, comparability, relevance.

In 2011 the Urban Audit practice was put under a comprehensive scrutiny in a close cooperation with DG REGIO and the Member States. The result was a set of 10 objectives for urban statistics towards a fundamentally revised approach. The work programmes defined in the grant agreements signed in 2013 aimed at achieving these objectives. The document describes the state of play of the City data collection and reflects on the accomplishment of the set objectives.

2.NUAC-meeting May 2016

DG REGIO and Eurostat organised a meeting for the National Urban Audit Coordinators in Brussels, on 10-11 May. DG REGIO underlined the need for data on City level. Some of the topics discussed were: policy developments, the legal framework on territorial classification, planned publications, methodological issues, etc. The minutes and presentations are available using this link:

3.Overview of data availability

The 2014/2016grant requested data for 68 different indicators for years 2013 and 2014. The availability of the data is the following:

City data / 2013-2014
AT / 97%
BE / 100%
BG / 98%
CH / 81%
CY / 1%
CZ / 60%
DE / 89%
DK / 53%
EE / 98%
EL / 7%
ES / 95%
FI / 99%
FR / 97%
HR / 100%
HU / 70%
IE / 1%
IT / 64%
LT / 79%
LU / 1%
LV / 86%
MT / 1%
NL / 89%
NO / 62%
PL / 68%
PT / 66%
RO / 63%
SE / 1%
SI / 1%
SK / 53%
UK / 79%

4.2014/2016 Grant round

15 countries signed grant agreements to deliver data in 2014/2016. The total amount of the grant is EUR1.064.000.

Work started in spring-summer 2014 following the time schedule set out in the Grant agreement:

Tasks included in the work programme:

  • Classification of the variables.
  • Compilation of the variables for the reference years 2013 and 2014
  • Supply metadata.
  • Communicate results

The detailed assessment of the data collection is included in document E4/REG/2016/52.

5.2016/2018 Grant round

Eurostat received 15 applications from a total of 16 countries. All applications have been accepted. A total of EUR1.357.829,17 will be paid for providing City statistics.

Tasks included in the work programme are the following (tasks 5, 6 and 7 were additional tasks, not mandatory):

Task 1: Provision of feedback to improve methodology

Task 2: Assessment of feasibility of harmonisation

Task 3: Provision of statistics on sub-national level

Deliverable 3a: Validated dataset for the reference year 2015 within 9 months after the start of the action.

Deliverable 3b: Validated dataset for the reference year 2016 within 18 months after the start of the action.

Task 4: Provide metadata

Deliverable 4: Metadata file according to ESS standards.

Task 5: Complement the perception survey on quality of life in cities

Deliverable 5: Results of the complimentary perception survey

Task 6: Set up and/or adapt the infrastructure to integrate information on territorial typologies into the regular LAU lists delivery

Deliverable 6: LAU list including information on territorial typologies

Task 7: Raise awarness and increase knowledge about sub-national statistics

All grant agreements will last for 24 months.The earliest grant agreement started in March 2016.

6.Presentation of data

Tables on Eurobase

All data for Country, Functional Urban Area (Larger Urban Zone), City and Greater city is published, per year on EuroBase.

The tables are organised following the same logic as the National and Regional data on EuroBase:

Names of tables

Population on 1 January by age groups and sex
Population structure
Population by citizenship and country of birth
Fertility and mortality
Living conditions
Education
Culture and tourism
Labour market
Economy and finance
Transport

Publications

On 7 September, Eurostat released the online version of the flagship publication "Urban Europe: statistics on cities, towns and suburbs" . The publication is broken down into two parts: the first treats topics under the heading of city and urban developments, while the second focuses on the people in cities and the lives they lead. Overall there are 12 main chapters, covering: the urban paradox, patterns of urban and city developments, the dominance of capital cities, smart cities, green cities, tourism and culture in cities, living in cities, working in cities, housing in cities, foreign-born persons in cities, poverty and social exclusion in cities, as well as satisfaction and quality of life in cities. These chapters can also be consulted as Statistics explained articles. The printed publication was available on 23 September.

In parallel with the publication, a web application "My capital in a bubble" was launched. It is a playful application which allows users to compare data for the capital cities of the EU Member States, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey for about 30 indicators grouped into different themes: living in cities, the economy and labour market, quality of life, smart and green cities and urban demography.

7.METADATA

National Reference metadata is published from the Eurobase data tables, see screenshot below. Countries receiving the 2013 Grant are required to supply national metadata. All countries except one has provided metadata.

Eurostat uses the ESS Metadata Handler (ESS MH), a Web-based application used for the production, validation and dissemination of European and national reference metadata files and standard quality reports.

8.Validation - Database

An external expert oversaw our data validation and suggested a set of rules to use to control the data. We redesigned the existing rules working on the production database following the proposal. All existing data has been validated and reports sent to countries.

All data received in 2016 has been validated before publishing. Error reports were sent to countries. When using EDIT in practice it is more effective putting all data for one year together, and using the function compare to reference data.

NSIs can have access to EDIT to check the data before transmission. In order to get access to the EDIT online version for Urban /City data, the user has to create an ECAS account and then send us an email with ECAS UID .

Below please find the description how to check the user's UID (different from the ECAS username used for login).

For more information on EDIT see:

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