Opinion of the Committee of the Regions on "The European Commission Final Report on The Urban Audit"
Date: 2001-04-04
Institutions: European Committee of the Regions
Subjects: audit, urban area

C 253/12

EN

Official Journal of the European Communities

12.9.2001

Opinion of the Committee of the Regions on ‘The European Commission Final Report on “The
Urban Audit”’

(2001/C 253/04)

THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS,

having regard to the European Commission Final Report on ‘The Urban Audit’;

having regard to the European Commission Communication ‘Towards an Urban agenda in the European
Union (COM(97) 197 final’;

having regard to the European Communication Sustainable Urban Development in the European Union:
a Framework for Action and the Urban Forum held in Vienna in 1998, at which an action on Improving
Comparative Information on Urban Conditions was endorsed;

having regard to the decision of its Bureau of 11 April 2000 to draw up, in accordance with the fifth
paragraph of Article 265 of the Treaty establishing the European Community, an Opinion on The
European Commission Final Report on the Urban Audit, and to assign the preparation of this opinion to
Commission 4 — Spatial Planning, Urban Issues, Energy and Environment;

having regard to the Draft Opinion (CdR 190/2000 rev. 2) adopted by Commission 4 on 9 February
2001, for which the rapporteur was Mr Keith Whitmore (UK, ELDR);

whereas the publication of the Urban Audit allows Member States to consider comparative data where
available on 58 cities of the Union;

whereas the publication of the Second Report on Economic and Social Competitiveness and Cohesion in
Europe allows Member States to debate the role of urban policy in developing the Community’s territory,

adopted the following opinion unanimously at its 38th plenary session on 4 and 5 April 2001 (meeting
of 4 April).

1. The Committee of the Regions’ views concerning the

European Commission’s Urban Audit

The Committee of the Regions welcomes the publi-
1.1.
cation of the pilot phase of the European Commission’s Urban
Audit, and considers it a valuable addition to the growing
body of data available on quality of life in urban areas across
Europe.

1.2.
The Committee of the Regions takes the view that
among the strengths of the Urban Audit is its breadth and
scope. It presents data across a range of economic, social,
cultural and environmental domains, rather than take a more
limited and sectoral view, which can be a weakness of other
statistics on urban conditions.

1.3.
The Committee of the Regions welcomes the involve-
ment of the official EU statistical body Eurostat in the future
refinement and validation of some of the data in the Urban
Audit. The Committee also understands that the Eurocities
network is involved in developing the indicators, and this is
very welcome from the point of view of piloting the method-
ology on the ground.

1.4.
However, while welcoming the qualitative approach
demonstrated in the Urban Audit (as opposed to a purely

quantitative approach), the Committee nevertheless has reser-
vations as to the genuine comparability of the data, given that
much of what can be termed ‘quality of life’ in Europe’s main
cities is context-specific — i.e. it is influenced by local, regional
or national attitudes, perceptions and culture.

1.5.
The Committee of the Regions also has reservations as
to the completeness of the information, given that the Urban
Audit contains many gaps in key data cells. The Committee
therefore has some doubts about the potential interpretation
of the data, and the policy conclusions which may be made on
the basis of such interpretation.

1.6.
The Committee of the Regions would have grave
reservations if the Urban Audit were to be used to determine
the future allocation of policy priorities and resources, without
comprehensive refinements being made to the methodology,
the completeness of the data and the interpretation of the
information collected.

1.7. Moreover, the Committee of the Regions finds that the
Urban Audit must be seen as only one contribution to the
wider urban debate, which will be influenced not least by the
European Spatial Development Perspective, the Second Report

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on Economic and Social Cohesion, and the Cohesion Forum
scheduled for May next year.

2.9.
Important concepts such as citizenship should be taken
into account when assessments of participation in public life
are being made.

2. The Committee of the Regions’ recommendations

concerning the Urban Audit

2.1.
The Committee of the Regions considers that the
Urban Audit contributes to the understanding of the changing
condition of European cities and would welcome a series of
interpretative reports on the main findings of the Audit, in
order to shed more light on the emerging policy implications.

2.2.
The Committee of the Regions calls on the European
Commission to develop an integrated approach to urban issues
across its own Directorates-General, as urban is a horizontal
issue requiring extensive co-ordination.

2.3.
The involvement of Eurostat will help validate the data
and the Committee of the Regions is pleased to learn that
Eurostat may incorporate some of the Audit’s more robust
indicators, into the official body of statistical knowledge at
European level.

2.4.
The Committee of the Regions cautions against the
Urban Audit being used as the main instrument by which
future urban policy is determined and assessed.

2.5.
The Committee of the Regions welcomes involvement
of the Eurocities’ network in piloting the methodology and
developing the indicators, and advocates the full involvement
also of local and regional governments in the follow-up to the
Audit. This will allow for a ‘bottom-up’ perspective to be
brought to defining major issues, rather than an overly top-
down approach.

2.6.
A similar Audit, using rather fewer but more valid and
verifiable indicators should be extended to the accession states
in due course. At this stage, the Audit is confined to the
existing 15 EU Member States.

The Committee of the Regions calls on Member States
2.7.
to look at their own indicators, compiled at local, regional and
national levels, to ensure that an internally coherent picture is
built up within each Member State itself; this will ultimately
help comparability between Member States at any given level.

2.8.
The Committee of the Regions believes that whilst
figures and data are important, supplementary information
such as that gathered through subjective surveys would assist
in building up a clear picture of quality of life, which is, in
many domains, a matter of perception.

2.10.
The Committee of the Regions points out that many
of the statistics, which seem on the face of it to be objective
and comparable, are in reality highly context-specific, i.e. they
are deeply embedded in their own Member State policy
frameworks, and these can vary enormously from one country
to the next, such as methods of assessing levels of unemploy-
ment.

2.11.
The Committee of the Regions believes therefore that
where there are ‘common yardsticks’ operable across Europe
(e.g. the International Labour Organisation definition of unem-
ployment, or the International Crime and Victimisation Sur-
vey), the Urban Audit should include these as an external
‘control’ or objective comparator.

2.12.
The Committee of the Regions welcomes the classifi-
cation of cities into ‘small, medium and large’, ‘northern and
southern’, ‘central and peripheral’ and ‘capital and non-capital’;
as a valid framework for analysis. However, as there is no
analysis of which particular factor, or combination of factors,
influences which particular quality of life indicators within
and across each category, this limits the usefulness of the
classification, and therefore the Committee calls on the
European Commission to carry out the necessary next step of
assessing the impact of these factors on quality of life.

2.13.
Cities wishing to join the Urban Audit initiative in
the future should be compelled to provide information in all
the domains, where the data exist; that is, individual cities
should not be allowed to withhold information they consider
to be sensitive, as this would diminish the quality of the overall
final product.

The Committee of the Regions suggests that the
2.14.
European Commission should concentrate in the near future
on building up complete information from the 58 original
participating cities, rather than at this stage seek to expand the
participation much further. The Committee appreciates that
the Audit was a complex undertaking (i.e. 58 cities, assessing
21 quality of life domains, over 3 points in time and at
3 different spatial levels) but notes that only one city managed
to supply full information for each domain across the three
benchmark years. The gaps in information should be filled.

2.15.
Exceptionally, London and Paris should be invited to
join the Audit as soon as possible. Even though they are
substantially larger in scale than the 58 cities audited to date,
there is a strong case for assessing their quality of life on their
own terms. Indeed, the European Commission’s London Study
of 1997, now in need of updating, has pointed to a number of
emerging issues such as the growing segmentation within the
city, which can help enrich the interpretation of some of the
findings in the Audit.

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2.16.
The Committee of the Regions considers that the
European Commission could do more to build on the Com-
mittee of the Regions 1999 Study ‘Evaluating the Quality of
life in European Regions and Cities — theoretical concep-
tualisation, classical and innovative indicators’, which pointed
out a number of emerging issues that indicators alone cannot
capture.

2.17. Much has been made of the idea of a ‘European
Model’ of urban life, — i.e. a city which is relatively compact
in terms of territory occupied, and limited in population to
under about 10 million at the top end of the scale, compared
to the ‘megalopolises’ of 25 million upwards forecast for cities
in South America. It would be interesting to compare such
contrasting models in terms of sustainability and life quality,
and the Committee believes that at some future date, the
European Commission should undertake such a comparison.

2.18.
The Committee of the Regions believes that the
European Urban Audit should be extended in due course to
cover small and medium-sized towns, in which the majority
of Europe’s urban-dwellers live.

2.19.
A useful analysis could be made between the key
findings of the Urban Audit, and the findings in the relevant
sections of
the Second Report on Economic and Social
Cohesion.

The Committee of the Regions recommends that the
2.20.
proposed Cohesion Forum, scheduled for May 2001, should
be used as a major opportunity to discuss in depth the future
of urban policy, related horizontal and sectoral policies, and
appropriate spatial planning frameworks, in the context of
balanced development of the European territory.

3. Conclusion

3.1.
The Committee of the Regions considers that the
Urban Audit will be useful to policy-makers and partners
working on city development within each Member State, and
that the European Commission should be congratulated. At
the very least the Audit contributes a substantial amount of
verifiable information on 58 of Europe’s major cities. Across
the Union, the Audit can help forge links between European

Brussels, 4 April 2001.

cities on a bilateral or network basis,
findings of common interest.

in order to pursue

3.2.
The Committee of the Regions considers that the
Urban Audit will be a useful part of any observatory or
think-tank set up under the European Spatial Development
Perspective (ESDP), the Interreg Community Initiative and the
Urban Community Initiative, each of which have specific sums
of money allocated to them for information and good practice
exchange, and strongly recommends that the European Com-
mission attempts to co-ordinate these different but related
initiatives.

The Committee of

the Regions believes that

3.3.
the
European Commission in particular needs to take advantage
of this clearly integrated approach, to overcome fragmentation
and to stimulate better corporate working within its own
Directorates-General, where responsibilities for urban issues
are shared.

The Committee of the Regions believes that the Audit
3.4.
if
can make a significant contribution to understanding,
the information contained within it
is supplemented by
information at the level of the locality on the one hand such
as perception surveys, and on the other hand, at European
level, by the use of objective, pan-European standards (such as
International Labour Organisation employment statistics).

3.5.
The Committee of the Regions believes that even with
sound interpretation, indicators alone cannot take the place of
evaluation and policy development, and the Urban Audit
cannot be used in isolation to determine future urban policy.
It should certainly not be used to determine future allocations
of EU aid. It is nevertheless a most useful
instrument for
steering urban policy at European level, and for providing
specific programmes for revitalising associative life, in accord-
ance with the results of the Urban Forum organised by the
European Commission in Vienna in November 1998.

3.6.
The Committee of the Regions believes therefore that
in the long-run, the Audit will realise its full potential for
Member States only when there is a concerted attempt made
to interpret key data in ways that policy-makers can use.
This includes demonstrating where possible, sound causal
relationships between the absence or presence of key socio-
economic, environmental and cultural factors, and subsequent
perceptions of quality of life.

The President

of the Committee of the Regions

Jos CHABERT