EUROPEAN COMMISSION Eurostat
Directorate E: Sectoral and regional statistics Unit E-4: Regional statistics and Geographical Information
SUMMARY OF THE
NATIONAL URBAN AUDIT CO-ORDINATORS (NUAC)
MEETING HELD IN BRUSSELS
ON 10.05.2016 AND 11.05.2016 The presentations are available on CircABC using this link: https://circabc.europa.eu/w/browse/7b9 cd110-2414-4c42-b58d-4182513268cd
DAY 1
1. Introduction a. Policy developments
DG REGIO explained the objectives, the expected output and the main principles of the governance of the Urban Agenda as a core initiative in political context. Twelve priorities have been identified with respect to the growing importance of the cities. Key words are higher transparency, partnerships and wider group of stakeholders. DG REGIO informed about three other ambitious initiatives called Mapping of EU urban initiatives, One-stop-shop and Urban Innovative Actions. b. News from Eurostat
Eurostat provided information on the state of play of current activities such as the new legal basis (TERCET) which is expected to give the cities a legal status, the update of the Degree of Urbanisation (DEGURBA), the Urban-rural typology and the Methodological Manual on City statistics as well as the dissemination activities. The need of new approaches how to streamline the City statistics was highlighted.
2. Territorial Classifications and Typologies (TERCET) – City definition and data requirements
The TERCET proposal is to include the most important territorial typologies into the NUTS Regulation without changing its undisputed substance. Some of the typologies have been used for more than twenty years without established common criteria. TERCET will ensure the legal recognition of the cities for data collections and analysis.
The entry into force of the TERCET will not create significant additional burdens for the NSIs since the data requirements were dropped from the proposal. Furthermore, Eurostat will manage the grid and update the typologies.
Eurostat demonstrated with some examples the analytical value added of the use of regional and territorial typologies in addition to data by NUTS.
Following the consultation on TERCET with the members of the Working Group and with the DIMESA and the Inter-Service consultation, the next step is to consult the ESSC Committee in September.
3. Update of DEGURBA and impact on city list
DEGURBA is now a part of the 2020 Census recommendations, which justifies the importance of the typology. Eurostat recently updated and published the classification based on the 2011 population grid and the 2014 LAU-2 boundaries (EBM 9.2). Data on Denmark, Malta and Greece are available at LAU-1 level as well. The update caused the most significant changes in the city list of Spain. In the Netherlands, France, Germany, Belgium, Croatia and Greece a few cities were added.
Following questions from the NSIs, DG REGIO emphasized the need of a perfect match between DEGURBA and the city list. With this respect, there are still some outstanding issues. UK will provide to Eurostat a proposal for a new city list by the end of June, so Eurostat will update the DEGURBA list once more. Eurostat will provide to Belgium the clusters layer for testing purposes.
For statistical purposes, the updated DEGURBA has to be implemented next year. Data on new cities will not be mandatory for the 2016/2017 City data collection but very much appreciated. Eurostat will provide the spatial units codes.
Specific cases such as islands and/or small countries will be treated based on bilateral discussions.
DG REGIO informed that the work on the separation between towns and suburbs based on 100 m grid is ongoing. Such a separation will not be included in the TERCET.
The SCORUS meeting
Eurostat took the opportunity to remind the delegates that they are invited to the 2016 SCORUS meeting that will be held in Lisbon in June. The deadline for submission of the abstracts is 22 May.
4. State of the Cities report
DG REGIO presented the content of the report illustrated by some interesting statistical findings on demographic change in European cities, economic development, social, transport and environmental issues.
Nearly half of the data that have been used for the report come from the Urban Audit, complemented by metropolitan regions data and data by Degree of Urbanisation.
The delegates took note of the progress and the planned release date in October.
5. JRC-REGIO urban data platform
DG REGIO informed about the common initiative together with the JRC to give an access to combined data on cities, FUAs and metropolitan regions from different sources such as Eurostat, EEA, JRC and municipal sources. The new data platform will enable the users to access the indicators with a simple click on an area of interest without pre-selection of the geography, which will minimize the constraints of the data availability.
A further development beyond 2016 will be the embedding of analytical functionalities for cities (target setting, benchmarking etc.). The delegates appreciated the initiative without further comments.
6. Urban Sustainable Development Goal and its indicator
Goal 11 - Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable – is divided into 7 sub-goals. Since they are too ambitiously formulated, for some of them there are no European data available (for instance 11.4). Hence, there is a need to harmonise the city variable list with the sustainable development indicators and to look for alternative data sources such as Big and open data.
The NSI are usually measuring the SDGs at national level. The main constrains are the data sources and the lack of quality guidelines.
DG REGIO and Eurostat underlined that the expertise of the NSIs is very relevant and proposed to set-up a sub-group responsible to find out any suitable indicator and data sources for measurement of the urban SDGs. The NSIs are asked to send their suggestions to Eurostat.
An open question is how to highlight the contribution of the Urban Audit/City statistics to the measurement of the SDGs.
DAY 2
7. Eurostat's publication on cities
Eurostat presented the content of the planned publication illustrated by interesting statistical findings using different data sources. For example: mobile phone data and Wikipedia page views have been used to give another perspective from official statistics. The data comes from Eurostat projects on Big data.
DG REGIO and Eurostat produce their publications in parallel, which can be seen as complimentary publications.
The Eurostat vislet "City in a bubble" will illustrate the data; it is intended to give a playful view, for beginners to data with no knowledge in the subject.
8. State of play of data collection a. Overview of data, metadata
There will be a data release on the 30th of May when Eurostat will update the data published on Eurobase. The update for the City viewer data is done around every six months. The next update will be in around 3 months.
Many variables have almost full coverage of all European cities. Some variables that are important for policy are available for between 50 and 200 cities, which is considered as very low availability. The National Reference Metadata files are available for all countries covered by grants, and by a selection of other countries. The countries not receiving a grant but sending data should update their metadata. b. Methodological issues
The updated Methodological manual on city statistics is available now. The delegates were asked to provide their feedback on the manuscript.
As mentioned during the first day, Eurostat is still accepting requests for changes in the City list; it should be updated and fixed for some time by the end of June.
The FUA list update is planned to be ready by the Working Group meeting in the autumn.
If the sub-city district definition should be homogeneous in terms of population or depending on social structure is up to the Member state.
Several participants would like to have a place to access the whole database. Eurostat will inquire if it is possible to publish it on CircaBC. c. Grants
Four of the grants from 2013 are still running. All other grant holders should send a final report and a payment request as soon as possible.
The 2015 grants had four obligatory actions: Feedback on methodology, assessment of harmonisation, data for 2015 and 2016, and provision of metadata.
The three remaining actions: Perception survey, LAU-lists, and raising awareness of City statistics are all covered by different countries.
The German delegate described how the grant made it possible to continue the work on extending the perception survey to more German cities.
All data deliveries are welcome; the data sent will be treated and published according to the release calendar.
NSIs are encouraged to fill in the metadata files and/or validate the metadata file prefilled by Eurostat.
The action to classify future availability of variables has been dropped from the 2015 grant.
If a new city has been added to the collection, Eurostat will publish all data available also for earlier years.
All NSIs can have access to the tool EDIT for data validation. Eurostat will send a reminder with a description on.
List of participants
NUAC Meeting -10-11 May 2016
Bratu Mihaela Romania Crkveneic Branko Croatia Doulou-Ouamba Marlene Belgium Haasova Gabriela Slovakia Jamagne Pierre Belgium Kezán András Hungary Kivilaid Marika Estonia Lautenschütz Anna-Katherina Switzerland Loxhay Michel Belgium Lucianetti Livia Fay Italy Mendez Rafael Spain Muth Alexandra Germany Palttila Yrjö Finland Pritula Olga Latvia Rutmann Gabriele Germany Soares Elsa Portugal South Bill United Kingdom Stawikowska Malgorzata Poland Tabone Manuel Malta van Venrooij Tom The Netherlands Brandmuller Teodora ESTAT Dijkstra Lewis DG REGIO Poelman Hugo DG REGIO Angelova-Tosheva Valeriya ESTAT Dourmashkin Kristina ESTAT Lupu Iuliana ESTAT