Swiss Federal Statistical Office

Division of Spatial Economy and Sustainable Development

Federal Statistical Office
Espace de l'Europe 10
CH-2010 Neuchâtel

Specific classification and coding systems have been developed for the spatial units and for the variables and indicators of the Urban Audit project.

Classification system for the spatial units

The city code consists of a 2-digit country code, a 3-digit city code and a final C for Central City - for LUZ an L is used and for SCD a D.

Each Sub-City district will have the city code plus a unique number afterwards to identify the individual Sub-City District within the city. Thus, each sub-city unit will have a unique code.

In the Urban Audit, some cities have 2 sub-city levels. For this reason, 5 extra positions are used for sub-cities. The total length of the sub-city code is 11 characters.

Classification system for the UA variables

A variable is the raw data collected by the national statistical offices of the countries. The variable data serves as the raw data for the calculation of the indicators. The variables serve as either the numerator or denominator of the indicator equation, depending on how this has been defined.

Classification system for the UA indicators

Indicators are labelled in a similar way to variables, except that the names end with an I to identify them as indicators.

For examples on these classifications please refer to the UA reference metadata.

The indicators and variables cover several aspects of quality of life, for e.g. demography, housing, health, crime, labour market, income disparity, local administration, educational qualifications, environment, climate, travel patterns, information society and cultural infrastructure.

For the complete list of indicators and variables see the Urban Audit Reference Metadata.

For most of the indicators, existing international standards have been followed as far as possible.

Detailed information on concepts and definitions used are available from the Urban Audit Reference Metadata.

In the Urban Audit data is collected for cities.

The selection of participating towns / cities and the definition of the composition of the LUZ and the SCD in terms of spatial units need to respect certain criteria set by DG Regional Policy and Eurostat and those concerning statistical quality in general:

• the participating towns / cities in each country should represent about 20% of the population in that country
• the participating towns / cities should reflect a good geographical distribution within the country (peripheral, central)
• coverage should include more medium-sized towns / cities than was the case in the Urban Audit Pilot Phase (medium-sized towns / cities are defined as having a population of between 50.000 - 250.000 inhabitants; large towns / cities are defined as >250.000)
• there should be comparability of data to enable comparative analysis between towns / cities
• data should be available

This "sampling" procedure for the Urban Audit project was carefully and specifically designed by Eurostat, DG REGIO, the National Statistical Offices and the towns / cities in the countries. The final selection of participating towns / cities in the Urban Audit was a compromise between all aspects.

The Large City Audit involves all "non-Urban Audit cities" with more than 100,000 inhabitants in the EU. The list of participating cities was agreed bilaterally with the Member States.

Switzerland – under the auspices of the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) in coordination with the Federal Office for Spatial Development (ARE) – is conducting the Urban Audit with its ten most populated cities, Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Bern, Lausanne, Winterthur, Lucerne, St. Gallen, Lugano and Biel/Bienne since 2009, after a pilot phase (2006/08) with 4 Swiss cities.

EU Member States, Switzerland, Norway, Croatia and Turkey are represented in the data collection.

Data are available for the period 2007 to 2009.

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The unit of measurement varies from indicator to indicator; from variable to variable. In most cases the unit of measurement is included in the label.

Data are provided for three reference years, 2007, 2008 and 2009. Census-year 2000 is included in case of unavailability of the reference year.

Visit the Portal to European Union Law.

All data supply of urban statistics is based on a voluntary agreement, as there is no Community legislation yet on this topic http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/index.htm.

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Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics (recital 24 and Article 20(4)) of 11 March 2009 (OJ L 87, p. 164), stipulates the need to establish common principles and guidelines ensuring the confidentiality of data used for the production of European statistics and the access to those confidential data with due account for technical developments and the requirements of users in a democratic society.

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The periodicity of the data is 3-years. A few indicators are collected annually.

The database is updated occasionally (on average quarterly) depending on the data availability of new and revised data.

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Overall, it can be written down that the processes and the quality of the Urban Audit are established. Nevertheless, there are a few recommendations that can be given from a Swiss point of view:

• The definitions of the variables could be more precise in the glossary.
• The sub-city district as a spatial level is important in the Swiss Urban Audit. It would be highly appreciated if this level could be kept and fortified.
• It would be appreciated if the duration of data validation and dissemination was accelerated.
• Rankings (top 10, low 10) in publications are normative. In our point of view, this is not a task for independent statistics.
• The visibility and the use of Urban Audit data at an European level must be encouraged and improved.

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Overall, 80% of the variables could be delivered for the reference years for the Urban Audits 2009-2011 (including the variables that can only be delivered based on the census year 2000).

Missing variables

Most domains can be delivered with more than 80% of the respective variables. The economic aspects represent the domain with the most missing data.

Generally, the absence of data is based on:

• the unavailability of respective sources in the Swiss statistical system
• diverging definitions (Eurostat Swiss definition)
• missing data for some spatial units

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Depends on the domain and individual indicator. As a general rule, timeliness is about 24 months.

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The approach of collecting data from existing sources makes it difficult and sometimes impossible to achieve comparability of variables over the entire "population". The National Urban Audit Coordinators did their best to achieve comparability of urban data, at least within their own country. Wherever it was not possible, attempts were made to estimate the data; where this has been achieved it is noted in the database with a flag.

Due to the sometimes deviating definitions and different data sources used the comparability of data is limited to some extent. Detailed information is available from the Methodological manual on city statistics or upon request.

For more information please refer to the UA reference metadata.

For the cities included into the data collection after 2004 no data for 1991 and 1996 were collected. For 1991 to 1996 (historical data) only a subset of the indicators are available.

Data collected at sub-national level is coherent with the data collected at national level to a limited extent due to the different data sources used.

Internal coherence (e.g. between spatial levels, between indicators like total, male, female population) is ensured through the application of multivariable and univariable validation controls.

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No preliminary data is published.

As the Urban data cover are very extensive, it cannot be excluded that errors exist in the data. Detected errors will be corrected after consultation with the national coordinator.

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Transnational Urban Audit

After having concluded the pilot phase with the city of Geneva, Basel joined the pioneer project of the transnational Urban Audit. Hence, Geneva and Basel are the two cities concerned by the transnational Urban Audit. This project is about to be realized (definition of the transnational larger urban zone’s perimeter, organization of data ordering at the NSIs of Germany and France, coordination of the Swiss NSI and the two cities of Geneva and Basel).

Furthermore, it has been decided that data for the larger urban zone of Geneva and Basel will be transnational data from 2012 on.