Presentation of Eurostat publication – meeting in Strasbourg on January 19th
During the last meeting, which took place at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Thursday January 19th, members and partners of the URBAN Intergroup had the possibility to learn more about Eurostat’s publication “Urban Europe – statistics on cities, towns and suburbs”.
During their in-depth presentation, Gunter Schafer, Head of Unit, and Teodóra Brandmüller, Statistical Officer from Eurostat, underlined that this flagship publication on cities is not a “regular” Eurostat’s publication. The policy relevance of having statistics on cities linked to the growing attention given to EU Urban Agenda reinforces the role of this report to enable policy makers to take appropriate policy choices on urban areas in Europe.
Eurostat’s statistics presented in the report cover about 900 cities and towns in Europe, based on 70 indicators on demography, social and economical aspects, environment, travel, transport and culture. However, data collection on cities is made on a voluntary basis (there is no legal basis for data collection or methodological details).
The report is split in two main parts: “City and urban development” and “People and life in cities”, covered by 13 chapters including introduction. One of the chapters explains the urban paradox. It shows that cities are often characterised by high concentration of economic activity, employment and wealth. But at the same time they are also cumulating a range of social inequalities.
In conclusion, it has been stressed that Eurostat works on the city definition and collection of data with the UN and the Worldbank. Moreover, there is a room for developing in the near future new data sources and methodologies. During the debate, mainly issues of micro and aggregated data were discussed.
Report is available here
