EGM on Urban Indicators

UNESCAP co-organizes meeting to improve urban information gathering

On 4-5 November 2004, the UNESCAP Poverty Reduction Section and Statistics Division, UN-HABITAT, UNFPA and UNSD organized an Expert Group Meeting on Operational Definitions of Urban/Rural and Urban Agglomeration for Monitoring Urban Settlements.

The objectives of the Expert Group Meeting were to:

• Contribute to strengthen global understanding on monitoring urban conditions and trends;
• Develop capacity of national and city authorities to collect and analyze the MDG and Habitat Agenda indicators; and
• Establish partnerships between urban experts from relevant ministries and city authorities (users of data) and the National Statistic Offices (producers of data).

The topic for the EGM was selected in view of the inconsistencies that still exist between urban definitions globally, as well as within the Asia-Pacific region. No definition of urban places has been universally adopted by national governments, sources of data do not follow the same definition over time, and nationally-decided urban criteria is not fully available, making it difficult to develop uniform standards. While some countries base their national urban definitions on administrative considerations, others base it on population size and density or socio-economic criteria. (List of urban/rural definitions in the 16 Asian countries that attended attached).

The EGM discussions revisited the complex issue of how to find a uniform way to distinguish between “urban” and “non-urban” areas given that definitions all differ. Consensus was reached that if we truly want to research urban conditions, we need to look at urbanized areas (as opposed to only municipal boundaries, which can be either under-bounded or over-bounded in measuring “urban”). It was further agreed that such urban agglomerations could be calculated based on the smallest census enumeration, looking at two key aspects: population density and economic activity. Statisticians attending a parallel meeting joined these discussions for half the day, building dialogue between the users and producers of urban data.

The EGM was organized in conjunction with a meeting on Data and Indicators to Monitor Progress towards the Millennium Development Goals and the Habitat Agenda. Both meetings are part of a Development Account funded project on “Capacity building at the local and national levels for the monitoring of the Millennium Development Goals, Target 11 on slums”, aimed at building capacity and strengthening partnership between National Statistic Offices (NSO) and urban planner at the city level to produce high quality, timely, city disaggregated data to support more informed policies. Through training programmes, advisory services, consultancy work and a series of sub-regional events, this project promotes a long-term strategy to collect, compile, store, analyze and disseminate official city statistics in a more permanent manner. The recommendations from the EGM will serve as input into the series of activities UN-HABITAT is coordinating as part of this project.

Relevant links:

Agenda

Aide Memoire

List of urban/rural definitions

The Global Urban Observatory (UN-Habitat)

Urban versus non-urban; Some remarks on the complexity of seemingly simple definitions (H. D. Kammeier)

Meeting report (not yet available)