The Urban Audit provides European urban statistics for 258 cities across 27 European countries. It contains almost 300 statistical indicators presenting information on matters such as demography, society, the economy, the environment, transport, the information society and leisure.

One of the main goals of the Urban Audit is to allow mayors and other locally elected officials to compare their city directly with other cities in Europe. Such comparisons can facilitate the exchange of experience and improve the quality of local urban policies.

The Urban Audit pilot project was commenced in 1998 with the aim of testing the feasibility of collecting comparable indicators on the quality of life in European cities. 69 cities (excluding London and Paris) were involved in this test phase.

The positive results led to the launch of a full scale Urban Audit including Member States and candidate countries. This was initiated by the Directorate-General for Regional Policy in association with Eurostat and the support of the National Statistical Institutes. 189 cities participated from the EU-15 in 2003, 69 cities from the new Member States, Bulgaria and Romania, who joined the project in 2004. Subsequently, in 2005, 26 cities from Turkey joined the project. The complete data set is available from the Eurostat statistical databases and is structured around three major dimensions: spatial units, indicators and time.

The Urban Audit aims at a balanced and representative sample of cities in Europe. To obtain such a selection, a few simple rules were followed: 

The Urban Audit works with three different spatial levels:

The Urban Audit was conducted at the initiative of the Directorate-General for Regional Policy at the European Commission, in cooperation with EUROSTAT and the national statistical offices of the 25 current Member States plus Bulgaria and Romania .

The Urban Audit project has proved very successful. Subsequently, a new set of data will be gathered in 2006. The number of participating cities has increased from 258 to exactly 300.

European Commission - Eurostat, Unit D2
Berthold Feldmann (Head of Section "Regional and Urban Statistics"), tel. +352 4301 34401

01/01/2006

research

Urban Policy