Urban and Housing Indicators

Most of the world's economic and population growth is taking place in cities and, increasingly, many of the world's major challenges and problems have their loci in cities. Poverty, environmental degradation, lack of urban services, transport, local government management and inadequate shelter and access to land are among the main areas of concern. This paper outlines the history of social and urban indicators and their application through the UNCHS (Habitat) Indicators Programme as one of the major country preparation activities for Habitat II. A list of 46 key indicators was endorsed for Habitat II, to be used with other indicators as the quantitative basis for country reporting on the status of human settlements. Some 109 countries participated in the UNCHS Indicators Programme, providing comparable data for 236 cities. The resulting Urban Indicators Database is a unique resource for examining the problems and conditions of human settlements, and will provide baseline data for future monitoring of the Global Plan of Action and national action plans prepared for Habitat II. The Indicators Programme also initiated capacity-building activities in which the indicators form the basis of national monitoring programmes and are used for training of officials at national and local government levels. A number of countries have set in place processes whereby the indicators from the Programme, often with some local adaptation, will be used to monitor major national programmes and will be collected in most urban areas. The values of the key urban indicators are presented here as regional averages and for countries of different levels of economic development. Preliminary analysis of the data reveals a wealth of information in support of known facts about human settlement activities, and sheds light on a number of new concerns.