Performance Monitoring Report of Cities

This Deliverable 2.1 Performance Monitoring Report of Cities describes the outcome of Task 2.1 of the URBAN-EU-CHINA Innovation Platform on Sustainable Urbanisation including:

Benchmarking and performance monitoring of matched cities by comparing existing monitoring systems and refining the initial indicator selection,

A balanced key indicator set for all participating cities including an additional set with indicators for cities to expand their benchmarking, cooperation and monitoring capabilities for improved cooperation and more effective measures.

Presentation of the evaluation results of all participating cities based on the urban development indicator framework devised jointly by the China Intelligent Urbanisation Collaboration Co-creation Centre for High Density Region (CIUC-Tongji Univ.) and the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT),

Analysis of the monitoring results of partner cities,

Analysis of typical city partnership patterns. 

The results can be used for benchmarking city performance targets, and they offer an approach to determine some typical and common criteria to select matching cities. Even if no statistical significance can be attached to the findings due to the small sample size, the findings of this report have nevertheless the potential to facilitate assessment of city development and collaboration for future cooperations between EU and Chinese cities, and to improve and achieve more effective collaboration through rational selections of partner cities. 

The approach taken for the performance monitoring of cities is based on the analyses by quantitative and qualitative indicator sets covering the domains of Society, Economy, Infrastructure, and Environment which were defined during the project and are also based on previous work. The quantitative indicators are based on numerous data sources, such as

Oxford Economics Global Cities 2030

OECD databases

Eurostat databases

Statistical Yearbooks of China

Databases of national statistical bureaus (e.g., National Bureau of Statistics of China),

Governmental reports (e.g., Statistical Communique of the People's Republic of China on National Economic and Social Development), 

private databases (e.g., Teleport[1], Numbeo[2]), reports issued by relevant agencies (e.g., China Transportation Report by Baidu, Inc.), 

open spatial data sources (e.g., OpenStreetMap).

In addition to the quantitative and qualitative screening of European-Chinese city pairs based on statistical information, empirical information concerning the perception of the collaboration quality and key success factors has been gathered, screened and assessed.  The qualitative data was collected through surveys and interviews with European and Chinese city representatives.  

As the first evaluation step, the Urban Development Indicator Set was constructed in order to monitor the key performance of all participating cities in the context of sustainable development. Secondly, data of partner cities were collected according to the Urban Development Indicator Set. In the third step, key performances of partner cities were monitored and compared based upon the collected data, and similarities and dissimilarities of partner cities were identified. Finally, the integrated quantitative qualitative data were used to identify typical patterns of city partnerships.    
Eventually, suggestions are provided for collaboration domains and collaboration types that could provide a collaboration starting point for prospective city pairs.

[1] https://teleport.org/

[2] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/