“Cities in a Globalizing World (2006)” is the latest effort of the World Bank Institute to put together a database that integrates existing data with newly collected data and indicators, covering a total of 412 cities in 134 countries. The source of this data includes the UN Observatory (1998), the enterprise-specific Earth Observing System (EOS) survey database (2003), and the Taylor database. They also include indicators constructed from internet searches. Even though this dataset is a good starting point, it has two crucial limitations: (i) important indicators are still missing and (ii) it is a cross-section of cities that can not be compared over time, limiting how much can be learned about the dynamics of the cities.

The construction and use of indicators in World Bank projects has been a common practice for monitoring and evaluation purposes. The World Bank often emphasizes the importance of developing and improving a result-based framework for monitoring and evaluating the impact of key investment projects.

The indicators currently used can be classified into two types: those that measure output and those that assess outcomes. Outputs relate to the quantity of goods or services produced, while outcomes relate to the results of providing those outputs. More emphasis is usually placed on intermediate and final outputs. Output indicators are usually collected before the project starts, during implementation in a periodic fashion, and upon completion. This process provides information that is essential for the management and supervision of projects.

The indicators are not collected at the same level of disaggregation across projects but instead, according to the unit of intervention (neighborhoods, municipalities, provinces, regions, etc.). Therefore, the data that the World Bank usually has are not comparable across projects or over time.

The lack of reliable disaggregated data is a limitation that the World Bank faces when trying to construct the baseline indicators for diagnosis. Usually, the projects need to conduct their own surveys to collect the data, thereby increasing the cost of preparation. Even though indicators disaggregated at a city level would not directly solve this problem, they could be an excellent tool to make the first evaluation of the potential impact of an intervention. The World Bank could also use city indicators to provide an approximate measure of the impact of an intervention at a city level.

# **4.2 Approaches to City Indicators and Systems Developed to Date**

Many organizations have worked on city indicators. UN-HABITAT is now the lead organization to design, organize and publish databases on urban indicators. Their specific goal has changed over the years. It began as a tool for monitoring shelter performance (1991), then focused on broader urban issues (1996-2001), and today is mostly centered on urban indicators that reflect the Millennium Development Goals. UN-HABITAT’s urban indicators measure how well a city or local authority is achieving Target 11 of the Millennium Goals. The methodology of the Global Urban Indicators is structured on collaborative data collection between national, local and metropolitan governments in each country<sup>10</sup> .

There are many definitions of indicators and more specific ‘city indicators’<sup>11</sup> . Many communities already have some form of municipal monitoring in place. For example, Australia and New

> 10 http://www.unchs.org/programmes/guo/

> 11 The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 1994) defines indicators as: "A statistic or parameter that, tracked over time, provides information on trends in the condition of a phenomenon and has significance extending beyond that associated with the properties of the statistics itself."

9