This State of the European Cities report is based on the Urban Audit, which allows 258 cities in the EU to be compared for the first time. After the completion of the Urban Audit Pilot Project in 1999, the European Commission decided to follow up this initial work, by launching a large scale data collection exercise in 2002II. The Urban Audit was jointly coordinated by the Regional Policy Directorate General of the European Commission and Eurostat, the European statistical office, with the involvement of national statistical offices and local authorities in all EU Member States and the then Candidate Countries. The Urban Audit collected data for 258 cities in the 27 current Member States of the EU. The resulting data set allows objective comparisons to be made between the cities included from across Europe, in the fields of demography, social conditions, economic aspects, education, civic involvement, environment, transport and culture.