Measuring Urban Development and City Performance

Cities represent the driving force of development in economic, social, and cultural life, reflecting also the spatial organization of human society. Taking into account the fact that cities are becoming generators of economic development and a source of growth for the national economy, there is an increasing urge to identify the stages of development and to establish a system for the ranking and positioning of cities and regions in this process (the level of categorization). This will allow the preparation of appropriate strategic and development guidelines for cities and urban regions to take place. In order to be able to compare the level of their efficiency in fostering development, there is an intensifying need to develop indicators that measure the performance of cities, are representative and comparable between countries, and allow verification to others. At present, there are many different urban indicators and institutions that compile and analyze them. Performance measurement systems, developed for internal use in some cities, already show a degree of measurement feasibility. The fundamental problem is that this variety of indicators lacks consistency and comparability (over time and between compared cities). Therefore, their use cannot be approved in a wider context (benchmark) of comparative situations. Upon the case of medium-sized cities, we consequently have to question the applicability of the methodology and indicators, used mostly in cases of large, global cities by internationally recognized institutions. With the established set of indicators and assistance of computer programs for multiparameter decision-making processes (analytic hierarchical process [AHP]), this paper also seeks to investigate comparisons between performance of selected European cities (on a qualitative basis).