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Abstract
Building a Global Urban Database
Track: Sustainable Development and Humanitarian Relief
Author(s): Jay Moor
Cities are the future habitat for most of humanity. And, it is the governance of cities that will determine how sustainable that new habitat will be. One of the weakest links in the urban governance process is the feedback and analysis of conditions and trends that tell us about the adjustments required to maintain the vitality of cities over time. One of UN-HABITAT’s mandates is to establish a universal mechanism for the monitoring, analysis and reporting of urban conditions and trends around the world, strengthening the self-monitoring and self-analysis capacities of governments, local authorities and civil society organizations.
Responding to this mandate, UN-HABITAT has expanded its global database of housing indicators to include a wide range of policy-oriented urban indicators. Establishing an embryonic network of “urban observatories” and support institutions around the world to help build local capacity to populate the global urban database, UN-HABITAT is now embarking on an ambitious effort to collect data from a global sample of 350 cities.
In response to the Millennium Declaration target of significantly improving the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by the year 2020, UN-HABITAT is refining its methodology and dataset to include indicators that will comprise a global Slum Index in addition to its City Development Index.
At the same time, Esri has proposed a grant programme as an incentive for urban observatories in 1000 cities among the developing countries to participate in urban data collection and analysis using geographic information software. How this is to be accomplished and who will participate is the subject of this paper.
Jay Moor
United Nations Human Settlements Programme (HABITAT)
P.O.Box 30030
Nairobi 0
Kenya
Phone: 254-2-623693
Fax: 254-2-623080
E-mail: Jay.Moor@unhabitat.org