## **3.2 Defining City Performance**

A system of indicators that measure a city’s performance requires an agreement on what the output of a city should be. City performance could be measured by how much, and how well, a city is doing given the resources it has available, as well as by its ability to generate new and sustained resources. Quantifying outputs and measuring how well they are delivered given a certain level of input is difficult, especially for something as complex as a city.

Cities are responsible for a wide range of services. These include health, education and human services<sup>9</sup> ; infrastructure; administrative and community services; public safety; frameworks and operating regimes for legal and business affairs; recreation; and ambient environmental quality. By providing these services cities try to achieve shared goals while responding to individual, stakeholder, and community-wide priority concerns.

The last 50 years saw growing and intense competition between cities. Cities now compete to attract investment, ‘knowledge workers’, tourists, and in the better cities, talented management staff. Cities need to provide secure political, financial and environmental communities. Often though, many of these characteristics are beyond the mandate of the city, requiring support from national and state and provincial governments.

With rapid urbanization, many cities do not have the capacity to absorb the high levels of new population influxes. The lack of shelters, basic services, such as water supply and waste collection, and jobs for these new residents significantly impacts the city as a whole. Migration, both in and out of cities, is one of the main factors shaping cities, e.g. São Paulo and Toronto. Although the level of influx often is not driven by the city but by national and international factors, the city still needs to recognize and prepare for these changes.

What does a Mayor need to know to measure the performance of a city? Mayors, residents, businesses, and financial institutions all desire information on a city’s performance. There are many ways to measure city performance. At both national and international levels, methodologies have been developed by many agencies and public bodies. This commendable effort has yielded important results. However, much work is still needed to make these measurements standardized, consistent, and comparable. Only then can the indicators be used as benchmarks and comparators across countries and over time.

# **4. Experience with Indicators**

## **4.1 The World Bank and City Indicators**

The World Bank recognizes the growing importance of cities and their role in globalization, decentralization and urbanization, which have characterized the last 50 years. Many questions can only be answered with city level data. Unfortunately, much of the research conducted by the World Bank has been limited due to the lack of reliable disaggregated data that are comparable across cities and over time.

> 9 The level of health, education, and social services provision varies considerably across cities. In many countries these services are provided by state/provincial or national agencies, however in all cities the most immediate impacts of the quality these services are experienced. Cities typically provide services directly or indirectly through concessions or management contracts. Canadian cities do not generally provide health and education services.

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