EUROSTAT
Directorate E: Sectoral and regional statistics
Unit E-4: Regional statistics and geographical information /
E4/REG/2011/06
(Only available in EN)
Working Party on Regional Statistics and Rural Development
to be held in Luxembourg,
BECHbuilding – Room AMPERE
on 4/5.10.2011
Title
Item 4.3 of the agenda
Minutes of the Urban Audit NUAC meeting
Brussels, 27 and 28 June 2011
Participants:
NAME / ORGANISATIONBeeckman, Duncan / CBS, The Netherlands
Christiansen, Henning / Danmark Statistik
Carlini, Alessandra / ISTAT, Italy
Corcoran, Dermot / CSO Ireland
Crkvenčić, Branko / Statistical Office of Croatia
Cruciani, Sandro / ISTAT, Italy
Difino, Marie-Jeanne / STATEC, Luxembourg
Dočolomanská, Eva / Slovak Statistical Office
Doulou-Ouamba, Marlène / DG Statistique et Information économique, Belgium
Harðarson, Ómar / Statistics Iceland
Jedlicka, Jiri / Czech Statistical Office
Keuning, Hilde / CBS, The Netherlands
Kezán, Andràs / Hungarian Central Statistical Office - HCSO
Kuscu, Mehmet / Turkish Statistical Institution (TURKSTAT), Turkey
Lipatz, Jean-Luc / INSEE, France
Lisauskaite, Jolita / Statistics Lithuania
Méndez Cruz, Rafael / INE, Spain
Minkevica, Jolanta / Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia
Neagu, Sandica / Nat.Inst. of Statistics Romania
Neumann, Uwe / RWI, Germany
Palttila, Yrjö / Tilastokeskus, Finland
Rejec, Renata / SORS, Slovenia
Scerri, Gayle / NSO, Malta
Soares, Elsa Isabel / Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Portugal
South, Bill / ONS, United Kingdom
Stawikowska, Małgorzata / Central Statistical Office of Poland
Trutzel, Klaus / KOSIS-Gemeinschaft Urban Audit, Germany
Virdee, Jagdev / Private expert
Waldis, Samuel / Bundesamt für Statistik, Switzerland
Brandmueller, Teodora / European Commission, Directorate General Eurostat
Dijkstra Lewis / European Commission, Directorate General Regional Policy
Dourmashkin, Kristina / European Commission, Directorate General Eurostat
Hermant-de Callataÿ Corinne / European Commission, Directorate General Regional Policy
Piskorz, Wladyslaw / European Commission, Directorate General Regional Policy
Schaefer, Gunter / European Commission, Directorate General Eurostat
Chair: Lewis Dijkstra Deputy Head of Unit (Analysis Unit, Directorate General Regional Policy)
1. Welcome
Wladyslaw Piskorz, Head of Unit (Urban Development, Territorial Cohesion, DG for Regional Policy) welcomed all participants. He emphasized in his opening speech the increasing importance of cities in the political agenda, notably by the 2007 Leipzig Charter and the 2010 Toledo declaration which have been adopted by EU-27 Ministers in charge of urban planning. Wladyslaw Piskorz also underlined the role that cities will play in achieving the Europe 2020's objectives. Therefore the importance of city statistics is obvious. The Urban Audit is considered as a first reference point for European experts studying urban development and challenges and referred to concrete feedbacks that he received from senior researchers from different parts of Europe. He pointed out that the involvement of NSIs was a key asset for the urban dimension of EU policies.
2. News from DG Regional Policy
Wladyslaw Piskorz reported on the preparation of the regulation for the next programming period and on the plans concerning the urban dimension of cohesion policy. To strengthen this aspect, a “City Forum” should be organised in Spring 2012. A cities' platform is also envisaged as a complement to a renewed URBACT programme.
Corinne Hermant-de Callataÿ (DG Regional Policy) draw attention to the “Cities of Tomorrow" reflection process which has been launched early 2010 and presented some highlights on the results of this process. In her presentation, Corinne also referred to the ESPON-FOCI report. Presentations during the "Cities of Tomorrow" workshops held in 2010 are documented on the web at:
Outcomes include issue papers on social, economic, environmental challenges as well as on governance issues and European urban foresight. Corinne also presented briefly the latest Urban Audit perception survey, the results of which are available on the INFOREGIO web site at:
The next "Perception survey on quality of life in European cities" could take place in 2012 depending on budget and internal decision making process.
Uwe Neumann, RWI (Rheinisch-Westfaelisches Institut fuer Wirtschaftsforschung) presented the "Second "State of European Cities" report. The report is based on a thorough analysis of the Urban Audit data. It focuses on the analysis of the data collection carried out in 2006 and 2007 (reference year 2004). Findings of the report include a typology of cities, and analysis of economic, demographic, social and environmental data as well as related challenges. In general the participants praised the report. Some improvements were suggested concerning the timeliness of the data used and use of complimentary indicators to GDP per capita. Continuity between city classifications should be assured in the future. It was concluded that in the future more and shorter analytical reports shall be produced in shorter time.
Lewis Dijkstra gave an overview of the urban highlights of the 5th Cohesion Report. The first part of the presentation focused on the information derived from the Urban Atlas, profiling compact and sprawling city development patterns. Some results of the perception survey were also presented. Finally, the analysis of social, environmental and IT related indicators by degree of urbanisation followed. The low response rates, the timeliness of the data and the lack of policy relevant analysis prevented the Urban Audit data to play a prominent role in the report.
3. Revising the spatial dimension
Lewis Dijkstra confirmed that in DG Regional Policy there is a strong support to continue the Urban Audit. Commissioner Hahn has a strong urban interest. During the stakeholder meeting in December, the NSIs made it clear that there is a need to reduce the response burden, simplify the data collection and increase reliability.
The proposed revision of spatial units is a response to the challenges mentioned earlier. This revision will ensure a complete coverage of cities with a centre of 50 000 inhabitants or more, boost response rates and provide more timely data.
The main changes:
- Link the Urban Audit spatial units to the new degree of urbanisation
- Harmonise the definition of the city and the LUZ (based on shared work with OECD)
- Adjust the city list and boundaries based on reactions form NSIs and following the logic of the degree of urbanisation and the harmonised city definition
City list and city boundaries
Participants welcomed the new approach: revising the spatial units based on standard methods will enhance the credibility of the Urban Audit and allow people to easily understand which cities are covered by the Urban Audit.
Although this new approach works well to identify cities with a centre of 100 000 inhabitants or more, some issues reduce the reliability for cities with a centre between 50000 and 100 000 inhabitants, such as the presence of steep slopes or bodies of water. As a result, NSIs are encouraged to analyse the list and propose corrections/additions for cities which do have a centre of 50 0000 inhabitants but were not identified by this method.
The Portuguese delegate pointed out that the proposed list of cities deviates from the list proposed last year during the preparation of a legal base. Due to these differences the revision requires a lot of internal co-ordination with cities, with spatial planning agencies, etc.
Over- and under-bounding of cities relative to their urban centre was not a frequent problem and in some cases could not be avoided due to the large size of LAU2s. DG REGIO proposed to use flags to mark cities which have significantly less than 50% of its population living in the urban centre. NSIs are encouraged to resolve the underbounding for cities where it was shown to be a substantial issue. This was the case in a number of UK, Dutch, Spanish and Swiss cities.
City functions
It was also mentioned that high population density does not necessarily indicate strong urban functionalities, for example "satellite" cities can have high density but less urban functions. Thinly populated areas are as well not necessarily rural, examples from Iceland were given. Lewis Dijkstra explained that thinly populated areas or rural areas did not mean agricultural areas. Both the rural region and rural area definitions had been developed in close cooperation with DG AGRI.
Lewis Dijkstra asked all participants to send him information about urban functions which could be used to create a stable typology of cities. Nevertheless, the selection of cities would still be based on the population size of its urban centre as uniform Europe wide information on urban functions is not available.
Commuting zones
All the commuting zones where data was available have been calculated and placed on the Circa website. Commuting zones for Poland and Latvia will be calculated at a later stage. DG REGIO will make an assessment of which LUZs deviate significantly from the current LUZ. The options to respond this deviation will be 1) change the boundary to ensure a closer match or 2) to maintain the current boundary in the interest of data continuity and data availability.
The Italian delegate pointed out that the Italian LUZ are based on the national labour market areas and they are defined following a different methodology. The Portuguese delegate asked if the 2011 census data will be used to revise LUZs. The LUZs will only be reviewed again in 2016 once both a population grid and census results will be available for all MS.
Sub-city district data
Sub city districts level data will be requested only for the census year. Sub city districts shall be defined for kernels and core cities only above a certain population threshold. In the future more emphasize shall be on sharing practises in creating and analysing sub-city districts. One option is a new GEOSTAT project. DG Regio and Eurostat would be pleased to receive proposals on how to standardize the sub city district level data collection to make it meaningful on the one hand but not increasing the response burden on the other hand.
Towns and cities with a centre with less than 50 000 inhabitants
Some possibilities to involve towns (cities with a centre below 50 000) into the data collection were mentioned. The Chairman stated that the current list captures the large urban phenomena sufficiently for the purposes of the Commission. ESPON will launch a study to define small and medium-sized towns with centres between 5000 and 50 000 inhabitants in Europe.
The Chairman concluded that the harmonised definition works well. It is urgent to finalize the list of cities and complete the harmonisation procedure since the new classification shall be used by the Labour Force Survey starting on 01/01/2012, by the SILC survey and by the new Urban Audit collection round as well. This harmonisation will increase both timeliness and data availability. The next update of the classification is foreseen in five-year time. DG Regional Policy will continue the bilateral discussion with the few NSIs with outstanding issues. Afterwards, the harmonisation of LUZs could be finalized. The chairman also took on board the suggestion that the Commission and the OECD could produce a "Handbook on City definitions".
4. Future plans for the Urban Audit
Gunter Schäfer, Head of Unit (Unit E4 – Regional statistics and geographical information) presented a general assessment of the situation of the Urban Audit. On one hand, it is a very valuable data collection which forms the basis of key regional policy decisions. On the other hand, it is undeniable that there are a still a number of unresolved challenges related to the Urban Audit data collection, such as completeness and data quality. In addition, the available urban statistics had not been used with the desired degree by most cities. Given the difficult general context the question arose whether the Urban Audit is a core business of ESS or not.
As a solution Eurostat proposed a line of action based on the following principles:
- A continuation of the Urban Audit data collection for the period 2012/13 based on the 10-point action plan elaborated in the strategy paper. Particular emphasis will be given in this round on the collection of information on the methodology for the data calculations and estimations in order to tackle the main concerns of Eurostat about the quality of the data.
- In the medium to long-term, Eurostat and REGIO will seek together a viable solution in a different approach based inter alia on an open data collection system in which also cities are invited to participate directly.
In the discussion whether the data is used by policy makers different views were expressed. The French delegate stated that the data is not used by French city officials because it is not considered relevant. Corinne Hermant mentioned a French researcher who had published a very laudatory article on the Urban Audit. The Swiss delegate on confirmed that the data collection is known in Swiss cities. They have regular meetings at national level with Urban Audit cities which helps to raise awareness. This could improve the situation in other countries as well. Dev Virdee reminded that the Glasgow summit triggered a lot of interest in the UK. Case studies combining local information with Urban Audit data could be very good to increase interest at the local level. German cities are aware of the data collection but there is no national level political interest due to the federal system. The British delegate inquired if DG Regio intends to use the data as a decision base to distribute funding.
Concerning the potential success of collecting data directly form cities participants had deviating opinions. In Germany KOSIS collects the data from German cities via the internet successfully. The tool provides a data entry form which contains basic data validation and methodological guidance as well. On the other hand, the Dutch, the Slovenian and the UK delegate said that most cities do not have the personnel to respond to such a request and most of the data is not available at the city level.
The French delegate was not in favour of reducing the list of variables as this would lead to loosing valuable information we have already gathered. He also mentioned that in France a lot of statistical information is complied on urban segregation and urban deprivation.
Lewis Dijkstra explained that the final decision on which indicators would be used to calculate the financial allocation had not been taken yet. Only indicators with a full coverage are being considered. Data on cities is being considered as one of the options. In addition, the Urban Audit will be used for targeting, monitoring and evaluating Cohesion policies.
The interest and support of the Urban Audit depends on Commission communication efforts. The current limited interest is partly due to our limited communication.. In the past, DG REGIO issued printed publications, had a dedicated website and organised city events. Now both the site and the publication are out of date. The Eurostat portal on cities and regions is not yet online. A city event will be organised by DG REGIO in 2012, it would a good move to ensure that the Urban Audit is present at this event. In addition, more regular publications and analysis of the Urban Audit will help to raise awareness of this useful instrument.
5. Questions and answers on the grant procedure
The Urban Audit data collection for the period 2012/13 will be supported by grants offered by the European Commission. Overall 1.2 million EUR is foreseen for this purpose. Teodora Brandmüller presented briefly the changes in the grant procedure since 2009. She emphasized the need of co-operation between NSIs since the new grant policy of Eurostat does not allow grants below 50 000 EUR therefore multi-beneficiary grants are foreseen. Eurostat offered guidance in preparing the proposals. Eurostat also promised to update the glossary by the end of the year.
6. State of play Urban Audit data collection
Kristina Dourmashkin presented a report on the state of play of the Urban Audit data collection 2009/2010. The fact that Member States started collecting data at very different points in time is reflected in the different levels of data availability. Eurostat also reported on the results of the validation and its plans to improve the validation process. A brief overview on the interim reports was also given. All interim reports arrived in due time except for Greece.
7. Tour de table
The Chairman requested all participants to express their views on the proposals presented in particular on the medium term suggestion to move to an open data collection system.
CBS, The Netherlands / Most data are collected centrally. Smaller cities would not be able to provide data as they do not have statistical staff. The success of such a direct approach depends on the attractiveness of the Urban Audit.Danmark Statistik / Denmark was not able to participate due to reduction in staff. This is going to continue in 2012 and 2013. Previously all data was collected centrally.
CSO Ireland / All data is collected centrally and most data is only available in census year. Waterford was very responsive but others are less interested in the project.
Statistical Office of Croatia / There are five Croatian cities involved. Regional offices in Croatia have been closed and the activities are centralized. The next collection will be done centrally. The census results will be available at the end of 2012.
ISTAT, Italy / Cities are probably not interested in participating directly as they do not have too much data, ISTAT collects 10% from the cities. Cities are interested not in the data as such but in the comparisons and in the analysis. However, Eurostat can try to request data directly, as a complimentary approach.
STATEC, Luxembourg / Collecting data directly from the city is not a good idea. The NSI is doing a quality check and that important step would be missing. The CARP shall be finalized as soon as possible. The Eurostat dissemination data base is very difficult to use.
Slovak Statistical Office / Data collection is centralized.
DG Statistique et Information économique, Belgium / 90% of the data comes from institutes and not from the cities, data on theatres, swimming pools, etc, the validity is questionable. At city level there is no staff and the quality of data is questionable.
Statistics Iceland / This was the first time Iceland was present. The NSI will reflect on the amount of work involved to decide on participating in the future.
Czech Statistical Office / Cities would be very surprised to receive a request for data provision. The statistical system is highly centralized. Segregation is a new phenomena for which statistical indicators are not yet found. The LUZ is delineated by LAU1 due to data availability. If we redraw it, it would decrease data availability.
Hungarian Central Statistical Office - HCSO / Minor part of the data comes from cities (public transport mainly). Census data will be only available in 2013.
Turkish Statistical Institution (TURKSTAT), Turkey / They would like to participate in the next data collection and provide data based on the 2011 census. In Turkey it will not possible to collect data directly from the cities.
INSEE, France / Collecting the data at the core city level causes no problem in France. However, there is a problem to collect data at the LUZ level. The French census is based on a rolling census so providing the data annually needs adjustments and expertise.
Statistics Lithuania / Data collection is centralized and the main data provider is the NSI. All population census data will be available as of 1st of July,2013.
INE, Spain / Most data comes from central sources not form cities themselves.
Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia / Cities basically do not have data. Interest in the Urban Audit is limited to Riga due to the lack of analytical capacity in smaller cities.
Nat.Inst. of Statistics Romania / The data collection is centralized. The census is the source of most data. The NSI will reflect on the possibility to include new cities into the collection.
Tilastokeskus, Finland / Almost all cities are interested to be directly involved. However, 90% of the data comes from central sources. The city list shall be discussed internally.
SORS, Slovenia / Slovenian cities are aware of the data collection and they are pleased to find all information at one site. Providing statistics is not the task of the cities it is the task of the NSI. Local authorities might have data on air quality and public transport.
NSO, Malta / Cities would not have data.
Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Portugal / Cities would have difficulty providing data directly. They do not have the information. Providing data for the exhaustive survey would be difficult.
ONS, United Kingdom / The response from the cities would be patchy. Some cities are co-operative others are less interested. The volume of cities makes it difficult and complex.
Central Statistical Office of Poland / Adding cities is not a problem but dropping them is a problem. The NSI would like to analyse step by step the methodology. Cities send the data to the NSI and the NSI checks it and transfers to Eurostat.
KOSIS-Gemeinschaft Urban Audit, Germany / See comments under point 4.
Bundesamt für Statistik, Switzerland / See comments under point 4.
8. Any other business