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Data Bases and Statistical Systems: Environment and Urban Studies
Data Bases and Statistical Systems: Environment and Urban Studies Erika No´ra Rego¨s, Max-Weber-Institute for Sociology, Heidelberg, Germany Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract The article on Statistical System: Environment, Urban Studies, and Human Development will demonstrate the importance of statistics on environment, urbanization, and human development to social science. All three fields of this article provide the readers with access to the most reputed national and international databases and frameworks in these fields. Additionally it will enhance the readers’ basic understanding of the structure and dynamics of today’s rapidly changing global environment, and its impact on living conditions.
Introduction Statistics on environment, urbanization, and human development are multidisciplinary, their sources are dispersed, and a variety of methods are used for their compilation. Environmental statistics generally aim to describe the quality and availability of natural resources, natural events that affect the environment, the impacts of these resources and events, as well as social responses to these impacts. Urban studies usually compile housing and real estate economies in order to measure infrastructure and quality standards of housing and the degree of urbanization of a given environment. In addition to the description of environmental quality standards, human development studies have put increasing emphasis on the measurements of basic processes and contexts of human life, such as the measurement of human well-being, life expectancy, and life satisfaction. Although from different perspective, all three fields aim to describe the quality standards of life and changes over time according to objective key figures. Environment statistics, urban and human development studies, and related fields are usually compiled and disseminated by government departments, central statistical services, research institutes, and international organizations. They are often interrelated with statistics in other fields, for example, with data on education, health, and gross domestic product (GDP).
Statistical Systems Environment History During the last four decades, various national and international efforts have been made toward developing a system or framework for environment statistics, either for a planned program of statistics or for presenting available data in a coherent statistical publication. As a conceptual framework, the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm, June 1972) was the first global conference to signal that environmental concerns had increasingly become the subject of mainstream socioeconomic policies. As a more empirical way, the first initiatives for the development of environment statistics at international level stemmed from two meetings of the
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Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) in 1973, which was followed by pioneered work on standard environment statistics classifications by the UNECE Statistics Division. Environment statistics programs also started at Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and later at Eurostat, focusing on data collection and indicator development, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the second world conference, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, June 1992), increasing emphasis was put on integrated environmental and economic accounting. One of the main outcomes of this conference was the adoption of Agenda 21, which sets out a series of principles and actions for achieving sustainable development (Hens, 1996). As a result of the increasing demand for environmental information, the first global collection of environment statistics was launched by United Nations Development Group (UNSD) in 1999. Since then it has been established in a biennial basis. After 1 year, in 2000, 189 countries of the United Nations agreed on 10 globally environmental indicators set up under the Millennium Declaration (2000) by the UNSD. Those indicators are developed to monitor progress, and simultaneously committed the countries to the achievement of the eight declaration’s goals and the other targets by 2015. Most recently, a huge number of documents and programs have been emphasizing the increasing importance of environmental statistics, information, and indicators. Especially, the outcome document, ‘The Future We Want’ of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio þ 20, Brazil, June 2012) highlights the necessary advancement in environmental information. It is also important to mention the European Commission’s efforts to integrate seven key environmental indicators in its general framework on ‘strategy for sustainable development.’ The OECD regularly updates its environmental data and indicators given the need of reliable and harmonized data on environment and including the ways in which it is affected by economic activity.
The Organization of Environment Statistics Research on environmental data varies from country to country and over time, which makes an international harmonization more difficult, although there have been some successful efforts to organize them internationally.
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The Statistical Office of the United Nations Secretariat was the first to identify those common characteristics that could be incorporated into a widely applicable international framework. The results can be divided into four basic approaches: (1) the media approach, (2) the stress-response approach, (3) the accounting approach, and (4) the ecological approach. The stress-response approach, originally developed by Statistics Canada as a “Structural Framework for the StressResponse Environmental Statistical System,” is the only approach that analyses the interactions between human activities and the environment. Its main focus lies on impacts of human intervention within the environmental (stress – such as waste generation, extraction of natural resources, and the production of hazardous substances) and the environment’s subsequent transformation (environmental response). All other three approaches give information on the different environment issues without any deeper consideration of the human intervention in the environmental course: (1) the media approach deals with the major environmental components of air, water, land/soil, and the artificial environment; (2) the accounting approach analyzes the flow of these components from their extraction (harvest) from the environment, through successive stages of processing and final use, to their return to the environment; whereas (3) the ecological approach gives an overview on a variety of models, monitoring techniques, and ecological indices such as the assessment of population diversity and dynamics, of biomass production and its productivity, stability, and resilience of ecosystems. Despite the presence of these four different basic approaches, the existing national and international approaches indicate a preference for the combination of the media and the stress-response approaches. To operationalize a set of activities that exert stress on the environment, (1) measures of stressors, (2) analysis of environmental response, (3) measurement of collective and individual responses, as well as (4) assessment of stocks of natural resources, artificial structures, and potentially hazardous substances have been developed. (See more on the stress-response at the Web site of the World Bank Group at: https://www.virtualstatisticalsystem.org/ themes/theme/31-environment/?no_cache¼1.)
Framework for the Development of Environment Statistics In 1984 the Framework for the Development of Environment Statistics (FDES) was developed and published by the UNSD to systematically present and organize environmental statistics. Its first two technical reports, the ‘Concepts and Methods of Environment Statistics: Human Settlements Statistics’ (published in 1988) and ‘Concepts and Methods of Environment Statistics: Statistics of the Natural Environment’ (published in 1991) describe in detail the sets of statistical variables within the FDES. Recently, the FDES have been updated and enlarged by two aspects: (1) 1984, the FDES has been completely revised, based on improved scientific knowledge about the environment and new statistical requirements created by emerging environmental policies and concerns; and (2) a core set of environment statistics that has been developed aiming to create an agreed, limited set of environmental
statistics that are of high priority and relevance to most countries. Actually, it is Tier 1 of a greater (though not exhaustive) basic set of environment statistics composed of three ranks according to the level of relevance, availability, and methodological development of the statistics. The aim of the revision was to emphasize the relationship of human activities and natural events in more detail by creating information categories that can describe a sequence of action, impact, and reaction. According to the UNSD, the revised FDES 2013 aims to guide nation-states in the development process of their own environment statistics programs primarily at early stages. In addition, it aims to be of help for all three institutional levels (national, international, and regional) in order to organize and strengthen the production of environment statistics. UNSD also cooperates closely with other organizations like the OECD, the Statistical Office of the European Union (Eurostat), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the UN Division of Sustainable Development (DSD), and the regional commissions, as well as with specialized agencies, secretariats of international conventions, NGOs, and others in order to create synergies and to avoid duplication of efforts in data collection.
Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development The OECD has been developing environmental indicators since the early 1990s and has published the first international sets of environmental indicators. These also included the OECD Core Set of Environmental Indicators. By ongoing revision and improvement of its environmental indicators, nowadays those indicators help to integrate environmental considerations into sectoral policies, such as energy, transport, and agriculture, and to measure progress in decoupling environmental pressures from economic growth. Most recently, the OECD has developed a set of indicators to monitor progress toward green growth. (See more at the OECD report ‘Environment at a Glance’ online at their Web site http://www.oecdilibrary.org/docserver/download/9713051e.pdf?expires¼ 1395789956&id¼id&accname¼guest&checksum¼1B9A2B7 C9F583B4823DABEA16639F642.)
The Statistical Office of the European Union Eurostat, The Statistical Office of the European Union, situated in Luxembourg, has also published a number of compendia about environmental statistics at a European level. In addition, and in response to an agreement by the European environment ministries at the Dobris Castle, a pan-European report was completed in 1995 (Dobris Assessment). Currently, the Eurostat environmental accounts include indicators on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, waste generation and treatment, water resources, abstraction and use, wastewater treatment, forestry and biodiversity, chemicals, material flow accounts, and relevant financial indicators such as environmental protection expenditure and environmental taxes. The indicator data are collected by the Eurostat and the European Environment Agency (EEA) and are available from the EU, its member states, European Free Trade Association countries, and candidate countries. (For detailed data please check the Eurostat Web site at http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat and the data taken from the EEA at http://eea.europa.eu.)
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The European Environment Agency EEA EEA is an agency of the EU established in 1990 to provide sound and independent information on the environment. It is a major information source for those involved in developing, adopting, implementing, and evaluating environmental policy. Currently, the EEA has 33 member countries. EEA’s main clients are the EU institutions and the member countries. In addition, EEA also serves other EU institutions such as the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. Most recently, the implementation of an improved environmental system for Europe, the so-called ‘Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS),’ has become the main focus of the EEA 2009–2013 Strategy and its daily operations. Originally, it was a proposal of the European Commission (EC) entitled ‘Toward a Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS)’ in 2008. Since that time, SEIS has become a collaborative initiative of the EC and the EEA and its Eionet (European environment information and observation network), consisting of 38 countries. The SEIS’s goal is to create an improved environmental information system for Europe based on a network of public information providers that share their environmental data and information. (For more information on EEA Web site at: http://www.eea. europa.eu.)
The United Nations Environment Programme The UNEP, founded as a result of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, is an agency of the United Nations that coordinates its environmental activities, i.e., assisting developing countries in implementing environmentally sound policies and practices. The so-called Environmental Data Explorer is the authoritative source for data sets used by UNEP and its partners in the Global Environment Outlook (GEO) report and for other integrated environment assessments. Its online database holds more than 500 different variables, such as national, subregional, regional, and global statistics or geospatial data sets (maps), covering a wide range of topics such as freshwater, population, forests, emissions, climate, disasters, health, and GDP. (See more at their Web site at http://www.unep.org.)
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Meeting online at: http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/ content/documents/1380REPORT_final.pdf.)
United States Environmental Protection Agency In 1970 the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established to consolidate the variety of federal research, monitoring, standard-setting, and enforcement activities into one agency to ensure environmental protection for the United States. With help from numerous partners, EPA has compiled a set of databases tracking down the following science topics: air, climate change, health risks, pollutants and contaminants, waste, and water. Most of these indicators focus on the United States, but some include global trends to provide a context or a basis for comparison. As EPA points out, their indicators represent a selected set of key measures for the respective scientific area, and do not reflect an exhaustive group of all possible indicators. Moreover, all indicators are based on peer-reviewed data from various government agencies, academic institutions, and other organizations. The selection of these indicators is based on the quality of the data and other criteria. Additionally, EPA has also developed a data finder to point out data sources that EPA manages and to facilitate access to environmental information (it can be found at: http://www. epa.gov/datafinder/). Similarly, the federal site, Data.gov, helps people to find, download, and use data sets that are generated and conducted by the federal government. (See more details on the EPA’s indicators, tools and methodologies here: http://www2.epa.gov/science-and-technology and on the Federal government Web site at: http://www.data.gov/.)
Human Development Most of the indicators on environmental statistics show changes are occurring throughout the Earth’s climate system, including increases in air and ocean temperatures, rising extreme weather events, a rise in sea level, widespread melting of glaciers, and longer ice-free periods on lakes and rivers. Such changes can represent a wide range of challenges to human well-being, the economy, and natural ecosystems. For that and other reasons, many researchers have turned their attention to construct indicators, which study human development best.
The UN Division for Sustainable Development The DSD provides leadership in promoting and coordinating the implementation for a sustainable development agenda of the United Nations. The division puts their main focus on five core functions: (1) support to UN intergovernmental processes on sustainable development, (2) analysis and policy development, (3) capacity development at the country level, (4) interagency coordination, and (5) knowledge management, communication, and outreach. Even though there is no special database on environmental indicators provided by the division, its contribution to the sustainable development is highly valuable. By participating in programs such as the Expert Group Meeting on ‘Institutionalizing sustainable development indicators for measuring progress of national strategies’ in Barbados in 2009, it encourages national governments and a range of regional institutes to conceptualize and implement their own systems of indicators on sustainable development. (See more on the Expert Group
Human Development Index The core insight at the center of the human development approach remains constant and as valid today as two decades ago: “Development is ultimately best measured by its impact on individual lives” (UNDP, 2014: 7). The Human Development Index (HDI) was developed by the UNDP to rank developed, developing, and underdeveloped countries by their level of human development. It measures the average achievements in a country according to three basic dimensions of human development: (1) a long and healthy life (life expectancy), (2) access to knowledge (mean and expected years of schooling), and (3) a decent standard of living (GINI per capita) (UNDP, 2014: 2). The HDI was created to emphasize that people and their capabilities should be the ultimate criteria for assessing the development of a country, not economic growth on its own. Additionally, the HDI is often used to question national policy choices. (For a full elaboration
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of the method and its rationale, see Klugman et al. (2011), for more information on the general use and indicators of the HDI see the following Web site: http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/ files/hdr_2013_en_technotes.pdf.)
Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index The Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI) was introduced by UNDP in their Human Development Report 2010. It was created to measure the level of human development of people in a society that accounts for inequality. Under perfect equality the IHDI is equal to the HDI. However it falls below the HDI when inequality rises. In other words, the IHDI can be seen as the actual level of human development (taking into account inequality), while the HDI can be viewed as an index of the potential human development that could be achieved if there is no inequality. The index has been applied to 132 countries so far. (For more information and data available see their Web site at: http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/ihdi.)
World Population Prospects The World Population Prospects represents the official United Nations population estimates and projections conducted by the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat. It is used widely throughout the United Nations and by many international organizations, research centers, and academic researchers. The 2012 revision of the world population prospects represents the 23rd round to display key demographic indicators for each development country and area within 1950–2100. (Detailed information about indicators on demographic variables such as population, mortality, fertility rates, on data sources used to derive estimates for those indicators, and on method used to derive mortality estimates, age mortality pattern, and child mortality can be found at their Web site at: http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/unpp/panel_ indicators.htm.)
Housing and Urban Studies Cities are seen as both the source and solution of today’s economic, environmental, and social challenges. For instance, they are home to 75% of the EU’s population, they account for about 80% of energy use, and they generate about 85% of Europe’s GDP (European Commission, 2013). Therefore, cities are central to achieve sustainable and inclusive growth within an increasingly competitive global context. That is the reason why urban development – economic, social, and environmental – is central to several international frameworks, such as to the Europe 2020.
History To develop indicators on health of housing, real estate markets, and on cities and their inhabitants, much effort has been undertaken over the past 40 years (Muth, 1969; Mills, 1972; Hochwald, 1961; Tiebout, 1962). Hirsch’s (1966), Flax’s (1978), and Murphy’s (1980) are just a few of early works in urban economics focused on data and indicator issues. The popularity of Money magazine’s annual rating of cities as well as Savageau and Boyer’s annual almanac urban indicators have even become popular (Malpezzi and Mayo, 1997: 3). With the
early 1990s, there was hardly any consistent data available for international comparisons of urban development outcomes, with an exception of some urban population figures (see World Bank, 1994). Since the early 1990s, some research on international indicators has started to fill this gap by an awakening interest in comparing housing and urban development indicators across countries. Especially, the United Nations and the World Bank sponsored the collection of several dozen basic urban indicators by individual researchers in a sample of 51 countries. The aim was to document and explain ideal collection procedures and to maximize comparability. The collected indicators could then be used in both a diagnostic and in a comparative way (for example see Mayo, 1993) or for the construction of indexes for housing policies and subpolicy such as regulation and taxation (Angel and Mayo, 1996). These initial efforts of the United Nations and the World Bank toward international comparability resulted in an expansion, both in terms of more countries and a wider range of indicators. In addition to housing and real estate indicators, a huge number of indicators related to socioeconomic development, infrastructure, transport, the urban environment, and local governments have been collected at the turn of the millennium. In the United States, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has taken the lead in preparing an initial set of indicators on 100 large U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (Glickman et al., 1996). In Europe, the Eurostat ‘Urban Audit’ data collection has been providing information and comparable measurements on the different aspects of urban life quality in the European cities since 2003. This brief historical paragraph on housing and urban studies relies mostly on the work of Malpezzi and Mayo (1997). In addition to the data bases presented and works cited therein, representative examples include, among many others, the work of Case and Schiller (1989) and Thibodeau (1995) on housing prices; of Holtz-Eakin and Rosen (1989) and Aschauer (1989) on infrastructure; of Ladd and Yinger (1989) on fiscal and governance measures; and of Rose (1989) and Malpezzi (1996) on urban regulations.
Housing and Urban Development The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is a cabinet department in the executive branch of the United States. Founded in 1965 and assigned to the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the HUD was created to develop and execute policies on housing and metropolises. According to the HUD’s own mission statement, it aims to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all persons within the United States. The HUD is working to strengthen the housing market, to bolster the economy and to protect consumers; to meet the need for quality affordable rental homes; to utilize housing as a platform for improving quality of life; to build inclusive and sustainable communities free from discrimination; and transform the way HUD does business (HUD, 2013: 2). More recently, several subprograms have been established, such as the ‘HUD youthbuild programs’ providing “disadvantaged youth with opportunities for employment, education, leadership development, and training in the construction or rehabilitation of housing for homeless
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individuals and members of low- and very low-income families.” (For more information: http://definitions.uslegal. com/h/hud-youthbuild-programs-hud/.)
The United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UN-HABITAT) The United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN-HABITAT has been a pioneer organization in the collection of urban indicators. In 1978 UN-HABITAT was established through a resolution of the UN General Assembly to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the overall goal of providing adequate shelter for all. In 1991, UN-HABITAT initiated the Housing Indicators Programme, focusing on monitoring the quality of shelters. In 1993 the program was re-developed and became the Urban Indicators Programme, which focuses on a larger range of urban issues. In 1996 and 2001, the Urban Indicators Programme produced the first two global urban indicators databases the Global Urban Indicators Database Version 1 (GUID1) and the Global Urban Indicators Database version 2 (GUID2), presented at the HABITAT II conference and the Istanbulþ5. The aim was to establish regional trends in key urban issues in a global perspective. In 2005, the Monitoring Urban Inequities Programme produced the Global Urban Indicators Database (III). In addition to addressing the HABITAT Agenda, this database provided information on the Millennium Development Goals, particularly for the target on achieving a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers. Since 2006, the Global Urban Indicators Database has been updated annually. (For the list of UN-HABITAT indicators see: http://ww2.unhabitat.org/programmes/guo/documents/ urban_indicators_guidelines.pdf.)
The UN-HABITAT Monitoring System The UN-Habitat monitoring system was established by UN-HABITAT in response to a decision of the United Nations Commission on Human Settlements. It called for a mechanism to monitor the global progress in implementing the HABITAT Agenda and to monitor and evaluate global urban conditions and trends at the international, regional, national, and local level. This monitoring function is provided through two main instruments: Global Urban Observatory (GUO) and Best Practices and Local Leadership programme (BLP). The GUO has the task to monitor and evaluate the global urban conditions and trends. It includes urban indicators, statistics, and city profiles. The BLP was established to make use of information and networks in support of the HABITAT Agenda Implementation. Both programmes operate under the Monitoring Systems Branch, which has the overall mandate to monitor the progress of the HABITAT Agenda and the Millennium Development Goals. (For more information see the UN monitoring system online at: http://ww2.unhabitat.org/ programmes/guo/.)
Eurostat – Urban Audit The Urban Audit is a statistical data collection by Eurostat providing statistical data and information on living conditions in Europe. After a ‘pilot’-audit in 1999, the first full-scale European ‘Urban Audit’ for the then 15 countries of the European Union took place in 2003. In 2004, the project was extended to the 10 new Member States plus Bulgaria, Romania,
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and Turkey. For the 2003/2004 data collection exercise 336 variables were brought together, covering most aspects of urban life. The second full-scale data collection for the Urban Audit covered the time period between 2006 and 2007. It involved 321 European cities in the then 27 countries of the European Union along with 36 additional cities in Norway, Switzerland, and Turkey. The basic philosophy was to deviate as little as possible from the concepts used in the 2003/2004 collection. However, some changes were made with the aim to improve comparability, data availability, and quality (Eurostat, 2014). According to the ‘EU – Cohesion Policy 2007–2013,’ the newest data collection includes 357 European cities providing data with over 330 indicators for the quality of urban life in Europe cities on demography, housing, health, crime, the labor market, economic activity, income disparity, local administration, civic involvement, educational qualifications, cultural infrastructure, and tourism (European Commission, 2013: 1). Data collection has been assembled every 3 years. However according to the Eurostat Web site an annual data collection is being planned for a smaller number of targeted variables. (For more information the indicators and database: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/ region_cities/city_urban/.) In addition to the GEO and the Urban Audit databases, there are many other databases on indicators related to housing and land in an international basis, such as the World Bank Data & Statistics, UNECE Environment and Human Settlements Division, the World Gazetteer, and the European Mortgage Federation.
The Future of Empirical Data on Environment, Human Development, and Urban Studies A main task of the environmental and urban statistics work today is the harmonization and standardization of the definitions and classifications of indicators at the international level. Improved tests and amended theory at an international basis are critical to an enhanced understanding of the state of environment, urban markets, and human well-being. A ‘standard’ list of global indicators can not only help to monitor current global states and trends of living conditions, but it can also represent the impetus for a better understanding of divergences and communalities between regions, countries, and their citizen. Currently, major international research effort was undertaken in most of the countries with support from numerous academics and other researchers, from the United Nations, the World Bank, the European Commission as well as number of national governments. In the light of these past developments, international data collection, collation, analysis and reporting could help us to monitor past and current trends of environmental and urban indicators and to forecast their possible development in the near future. Continued serious and globally concerted work on environmental, urban, and human developmental indicators will improve and illuminate public policy. Additionally it will enhance our basic understanding of the structure and dynamics of today’s rapidly changing global environment, and its impact on living conditions.
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See also: Development and Urbanization; Eco-cities and Sustainable Urbanism; Environmental Conservation and Development: Critical Perspectives; Environmental Policy: Protection and Regulation; Planning Issues and Sustainable Development; Urban Sociology; Urbanization.
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HUD, 2013. FY 2013 BUDGET. Housing and Communities Built to Last. http:// www.google.hu/url?sa¼t&rct¼j&q¼&esrc¼s&source¼web&cd¼1&ved¼ 0CCsQFjAA&url¼http%3A%2F%2Fportal.hud.gov%2Fhudportal%2Fdocuments% 2Fhuddoc%3Fid%3DCombBudget2013.pdf&ei¼8D81U7jJIKnhywPFjIKgBQ&usg¼ AFQjCNHLrewX8uKNaftmjZwiL9pvFBHOqg&sig2¼KYOKL3tv8g4nWI38qdEmNw& bvm¼bv.63808443,d.bGQ (accessed 12.01.14.). Klugman, J., Rodriguez, F., Choi, H., 2011. The HDI 2010: new controversies, old critiques. Journal of Economic Inequality 9 (2), 249–288. Ladd, H.F., Yinger, J., 1989. America’s Ailing Cities: Fiscal Health and the Design of Urban Policy. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD. Malpezzi, S., 1996. Housing prices, externalities, and regulation in U.S. metropolitan areas. Journal of Housing Research 7 (2), 209–241. Malpezzi, S., Mayo, S., 1997. Housing and urban development indicators: a good idea whose time has returned. Real Estate Economics 25 (1), 1–11. Mayo, S.K., 1993. South African Housing Sector Performance in International Perspective. Paper presented to the 21st IAHS Housing Congress. Capetown, South Africa. Mills, E.S., 1972. Studies in the Structure of the Urban Economy. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD. Murphy, T., 1980. Urban Indicators: A Guide to Information Sources. Gale Research Company, Detroit, MI. Muth, R.F., 1969. Cities and Housing. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Rose, L.A., 1989. Topographical constraints and urban land supply indexes. Journal of Urban Economics 26 (3), 335–347. Thibodeau, T.G., 1995. House price indices from the 1884–1992 MSA American Housing Surveys. Journal of Housing Research 6 (3), 439–479. Tiebout, C.M., 1962. The Community Economic Base Study. Committee for Economic Development, New York. UNDP, 2013. Human Development Report 2013-Technical Notes. The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World. http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/ hdr_2013_en_technotes.pdf (accessed 12.01.14.). United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2013. World Population Prospects, the 2012 Revision. United Nations, New York. United Nations Human Settlement Programme, 2004. Urban Indicator Guidelines. Monitoring the Habitat Agenda and the Millenium Development Goals. http://ww2. unhabitat.org/programmes/guo/documents/urban_indicators_guidelines.pdf (accessed 16.03.14.). United Nations Development Programs, 2014. Human Development Reports. About Human Development. http://hdr.undp.org/en/humandev (accessed 16.03.14.). World Bank, 1994. World Development Report 1994: Infrastructure for Development. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York.
Abstract The article on Statistical System: Environment, Urban Studies, and Human Development will demonstrate the importance of statistics on environment, urbanization, and human development to social science. All three fields of this article provide the readers with access to the most reputed national and international databases and frameworks in these fields. Additionally it will enhance the readers’ basic understanding of the structure and dynamics of today’s rapidly changing global environment, and its impact on living conditions.
Introduction Statistics on environment, urbanization, and human development are multidisciplinary, their sources are dispersed, and a variety of methods are used for their compilation. Environmental statistics generally aim to describe the quality and availability of natural resources, natural events that affect the environment, the impacts of these resources and events, as well as social responses to these impacts. Urban studies usually compile housing and real estate economies in order to measure infrastructure and quality standards of housing and the degree of urbanization of a given environment. In addition to the description of environmental quality standards, human development studies have put increasing emphasis on the measurements of basic processes and contexts of human life, such as the measurement of human well-being, life expectancy, and life satisfaction. Although from different perspective, all three fields aim to describe the quality standards of life and changes over time according to objective key figures. Environment statistics, urban and human development studies, and related fields are usually compiled and disseminated by government departments, central statistical services, research institutes, and international organizations. They are often interrelated with statistics in other fields, for example, with data on education, health, and gross domestic product (GDP).
Statistical Systems Environment History During the last four decades, various national and international efforts have been made toward developing a system or framework for environment statistics, either for a planned program of statistics or for presenting available data in a coherent statistical publication. As a conceptual framework, the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm, June 1972) was the first global conference to signal that environmental concerns had increasingly become the subject of mainstream socioeconomic policies. As a more empirical way, the first initiatives for the development of environment statistics at international level stemmed from two meetings of the
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Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) in 1973, which was followed by pioneered work on standard environment statistics classifications by the UNECE Statistics Division. Environment statistics programs also started at Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and later at Eurostat, focusing on data collection and indicator development, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the second world conference, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, June 1992), increasing emphasis was put on integrated environmental and economic accounting. One of the main outcomes of this conference was the adoption of Agenda 21, which sets out a series of principles and actions for achieving sustainable development (Hens, 1996). As a result of the increasing demand for environmental information, the first global collection of environment statistics was launched by United Nations Development Group (UNSD) in 1999. Since then it has been established in a biennial basis. After 1 year, in 2000, 189 countries of the United Nations agreed on 10 globally environmental indicators set up under the Millennium Declaration (2000) by the UNSD. Those indicators are developed to monitor progress, and simultaneously committed the countries to the achievement of the eight declaration’s goals and the other targets by 2015. Most recently, a huge number of documents and programs have been emphasizing the increasing importance of environmental statistics, information, and indicators. Especially, the outcome document, ‘The Future We Want’ of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio þ 20, Brazil, June 2012) highlights the necessary advancement in environmental information. It is also important to mention the European Commission’s efforts to integrate seven key environmental indicators in its general framework on ‘strategy for sustainable development.’ The OECD regularly updates its environmental data and indicators given the need of reliable and harmonized data on environment and including the ways in which it is affected by economic activity.
The Organization of Environment Statistics Research on environmental data varies from country to country and over time, which makes an international harmonization more difficult, although there have been some successful efforts to organize them internationally.
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The Statistical Office of the United Nations Secretariat was the first to identify those common characteristics that could be incorporated into a widely applicable international framework. The results can be divided into four basic approaches: (1) the media approach, (2) the stress-response approach, (3) the accounting approach, and (4) the ecological approach. The stress-response approach, originally developed by Statistics Canada as a “Structural Framework for the StressResponse Environmental Statistical System,” is the only approach that analyses the interactions between human activities and the environment. Its main focus lies on impacts of human intervention within the environmental (stress – such as waste generation, extraction of natural resources, and the production of hazardous substances) and the environment’s subsequent transformation (environmental response). All other three approaches give information on the different environment issues without any deeper consideration of the human intervention in the environmental course: (1) the media approach deals with the major environmental components of air, water, land/soil, and the artificial environment; (2) the accounting approach analyzes the flow of these components from their extraction (harvest) from the environment, through successive stages of processing and final use, to their return to the environment; whereas (3) the ecological approach gives an overview on a variety of models, monitoring techniques, and ecological indices such as the assessment of population diversity and dynamics, of biomass production and its productivity, stability, and resilience of ecosystems. Despite the presence of these four different basic approaches, the existing national and international approaches indicate a preference for the combination of the media and the stress-response approaches. To operationalize a set of activities that exert stress on the environment, (1) measures of stressors, (2) analysis of environmental response, (3) measurement of collective and individual responses, as well as (4) assessment of stocks of natural resources, artificial structures, and potentially hazardous substances have been developed. (See more on the stress-response at the Web site of the World Bank Group at: https://www.virtualstatisticalsystem.org/ themes/theme/31-environment/?no_cache¼1.)
Framework for the Development of Environment Statistics In 1984 the Framework for the Development of Environment Statistics (FDES) was developed and published by the UNSD to systematically present and organize environmental statistics. Its first two technical reports, the ‘Concepts and Methods of Environment Statistics: Human Settlements Statistics’ (published in 1988) and ‘Concepts and Methods of Environment Statistics: Statistics of the Natural Environment’ (published in 1991) describe in detail the sets of statistical variables within the FDES. Recently, the FDES have been updated and enlarged by two aspects: (1) 1984, the FDES has been completely revised, based on improved scientific knowledge about the environment and new statistical requirements created by emerging environmental policies and concerns; and (2) a core set of environment statistics that has been developed aiming to create an agreed, limited set of environmental
statistics that are of high priority and relevance to most countries. Actually, it is Tier 1 of a greater (though not exhaustive) basic set of environment statistics composed of three ranks according to the level of relevance, availability, and methodological development of the statistics. The aim of the revision was to emphasize the relationship of human activities and natural events in more detail by creating information categories that can describe a sequence of action, impact, and reaction. According to the UNSD, the revised FDES 2013 aims to guide nation-states in the development process of their own environment statistics programs primarily at early stages. In addition, it aims to be of help for all three institutional levels (national, international, and regional) in order to organize and strengthen the production of environment statistics. UNSD also cooperates closely with other organizations like the OECD, the Statistical Office of the European Union (Eurostat), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the UN Division of Sustainable Development (DSD), and the regional commissions, as well as with specialized agencies, secretariats of international conventions, NGOs, and others in order to create synergies and to avoid duplication of efforts in data collection.
Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development The OECD has been developing environmental indicators since the early 1990s and has published the first international sets of environmental indicators. These also included the OECD Core Set of Environmental Indicators. By ongoing revision and improvement of its environmental indicators, nowadays those indicators help to integrate environmental considerations into sectoral policies, such as energy, transport, and agriculture, and to measure progress in decoupling environmental pressures from economic growth. Most recently, the OECD has developed a set of indicators to monitor progress toward green growth. (See more at the OECD report ‘Environment at a Glance’ online at their Web site http://www.oecdilibrary.org/docserver/download/9713051e.pdf?expires¼ 1395789956&id¼id&accname¼guest&checksum¼1B9A2B7 C9F583B4823DABEA16639F642.)
The Statistical Office of the European Union Eurostat, The Statistical Office of the European Union, situated in Luxembourg, has also published a number of compendia about environmental statistics at a European level. In addition, and in response to an agreement by the European environment ministries at the Dobris Castle, a pan-European report was completed in 1995 (Dobris Assessment). Currently, the Eurostat environmental accounts include indicators on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, waste generation and treatment, water resources, abstraction and use, wastewater treatment, forestry and biodiversity, chemicals, material flow accounts, and relevant financial indicators such as environmental protection expenditure and environmental taxes. The indicator data are collected by the Eurostat and the European Environment Agency (EEA) and are available from the EU, its member states, European Free Trade Association countries, and candidate countries. (For detailed data please check the Eurostat Web site at http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat and the data taken from the EEA at http://eea.europa.eu.)
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The European Environment Agency EEA EEA is an agency of the EU established in 1990 to provide sound and independent information on the environment. It is a major information source for those involved in developing, adopting, implementing, and evaluating environmental policy. Currently, the EEA has 33 member countries. EEA’s main clients are the EU institutions and the member countries. In addition, EEA also serves other EU institutions such as the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. Most recently, the implementation of an improved environmental system for Europe, the so-called ‘Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS),’ has become the main focus of the EEA 2009–2013 Strategy and its daily operations. Originally, it was a proposal of the European Commission (EC) entitled ‘Toward a Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS)’ in 2008. Since that time, SEIS has become a collaborative initiative of the EC and the EEA and its Eionet (European environment information and observation network), consisting of 38 countries. The SEIS’s goal is to create an improved environmental information system for Europe based on a network of public information providers that share their environmental data and information. (For more information on EEA Web site at: http://www.eea. europa.eu.)
The United Nations Environment Programme The UNEP, founded as a result of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, is an agency of the United Nations that coordinates its environmental activities, i.e., assisting developing countries in implementing environmentally sound policies and practices. The so-called Environmental Data Explorer is the authoritative source for data sets used by UNEP and its partners in the Global Environment Outlook (GEO) report and for other integrated environment assessments. Its online database holds more than 500 different variables, such as national, subregional, regional, and global statistics or geospatial data sets (maps), covering a wide range of topics such as freshwater, population, forests, emissions, climate, disasters, health, and GDP. (See more at their Web site at http://www.unep.org.)
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Meeting online at: http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/ content/documents/1380REPORT_final.pdf.)
United States Environmental Protection Agency In 1970 the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established to consolidate the variety of federal research, monitoring, standard-setting, and enforcement activities into one agency to ensure environmental protection for the United States. With help from numerous partners, EPA has compiled a set of databases tracking down the following science topics: air, climate change, health risks, pollutants and contaminants, waste, and water. Most of these indicators focus on the United States, but some include global trends to provide a context or a basis for comparison. As EPA points out, their indicators represent a selected set of key measures for the respective scientific area, and do not reflect an exhaustive group of all possible indicators. Moreover, all indicators are based on peer-reviewed data from various government agencies, academic institutions, and other organizations. The selection of these indicators is based on the quality of the data and other criteria. Additionally, EPA has also developed a data finder to point out data sources that EPA manages and to facilitate access to environmental information (it can be found at: http://www. epa.gov/datafinder/). Similarly, the federal site, Data.gov, helps people to find, download, and use data sets that are generated and conducted by the federal government. (See more details on the EPA’s indicators, tools and methodologies here: http://www2.epa.gov/science-and-technology and on the Federal government Web site at: http://www.data.gov/.)
Human Development Most of the indicators on environmental statistics show changes are occurring throughout the Earth’s climate system, including increases in air and ocean temperatures, rising extreme weather events, a rise in sea level, widespread melting of glaciers, and longer ice-free periods on lakes and rivers. Such changes can represent a wide range of challenges to human well-being, the economy, and natural ecosystems. For that and other reasons, many researchers have turned their attention to construct indicators, which study human development best.
The UN Division for Sustainable Development The DSD provides leadership in promoting and coordinating the implementation for a sustainable development agenda of the United Nations. The division puts their main focus on five core functions: (1) support to UN intergovernmental processes on sustainable development, (2) analysis and policy development, (3) capacity development at the country level, (4) interagency coordination, and (5) knowledge management, communication, and outreach. Even though there is no special database on environmental indicators provided by the division, its contribution to the sustainable development is highly valuable. By participating in programs such as the Expert Group Meeting on ‘Institutionalizing sustainable development indicators for measuring progress of national strategies’ in Barbados in 2009, it encourages national governments and a range of regional institutes to conceptualize and implement their own systems of indicators on sustainable development. (See more on the Expert Group
Human Development Index The core insight at the center of the human development approach remains constant and as valid today as two decades ago: “Development is ultimately best measured by its impact on individual lives” (UNDP, 2014: 7). The Human Development Index (HDI) was developed by the UNDP to rank developed, developing, and underdeveloped countries by their level of human development. It measures the average achievements in a country according to three basic dimensions of human development: (1) a long and healthy life (life expectancy), (2) access to knowledge (mean and expected years of schooling), and (3) a decent standard of living (GINI per capita) (UNDP, 2014: 2). The HDI was created to emphasize that people and their capabilities should be the ultimate criteria for assessing the development of a country, not economic growth on its own. Additionally, the HDI is often used to question national policy choices. (For a full elaboration
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of the method and its rationale, see Klugman et al. (2011), for more information on the general use and indicators of the HDI see the following Web site: http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/ files/hdr_2013_en_technotes.pdf.)
Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index The Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI) was introduced by UNDP in their Human Development Report 2010. It was created to measure the level of human development of people in a society that accounts for inequality. Under perfect equality the IHDI is equal to the HDI. However it falls below the HDI when inequality rises. In other words, the IHDI can be seen as the actual level of human development (taking into account inequality), while the HDI can be viewed as an index of the potential human development that could be achieved if there is no inequality. The index has been applied to 132 countries so far. (For more information and data available see their Web site at: http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/ihdi.)
World Population Prospects The World Population Prospects represents the official United Nations population estimates and projections conducted by the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat. It is used widely throughout the United Nations and by many international organizations, research centers, and academic researchers. The 2012 revision of the world population prospects represents the 23rd round to display key demographic indicators for each development country and area within 1950–2100. (Detailed information about indicators on demographic variables such as population, mortality, fertility rates, on data sources used to derive estimates for those indicators, and on method used to derive mortality estimates, age mortality pattern, and child mortality can be found at their Web site at: http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/unpp/panel_ indicators.htm.)
Housing and Urban Studies Cities are seen as both the source and solution of today’s economic, environmental, and social challenges. For instance, they are home to 75% of the EU’s population, they account for about 80% of energy use, and they generate about 85% of Europe’s GDP (European Commission, 2013). Therefore, cities are central to achieve sustainable and inclusive growth within an increasingly competitive global context. That is the reason why urban development – economic, social, and environmental – is central to several international frameworks, such as to the Europe 2020.
History To develop indicators on health of housing, real estate markets, and on cities and their inhabitants, much effort has been undertaken over the past 40 years (Muth, 1969; Mills, 1972; Hochwald, 1961; Tiebout, 1962). Hirsch’s (1966), Flax’s (1978), and Murphy’s (1980) are just a few of early works in urban economics focused on data and indicator issues. The popularity of Money magazine’s annual rating of cities as well as Savageau and Boyer’s annual almanac urban indicators have even become popular (Malpezzi and Mayo, 1997: 3). With the
early 1990s, there was hardly any consistent data available for international comparisons of urban development outcomes, with an exception of some urban population figures (see World Bank, 1994). Since the early 1990s, some research on international indicators has started to fill this gap by an awakening interest in comparing housing and urban development indicators across countries. Especially, the United Nations and the World Bank sponsored the collection of several dozen basic urban indicators by individual researchers in a sample of 51 countries. The aim was to document and explain ideal collection procedures and to maximize comparability. The collected indicators could then be used in both a diagnostic and in a comparative way (for example see Mayo, 1993) or for the construction of indexes for housing policies and subpolicy such as regulation and taxation (Angel and Mayo, 1996). These initial efforts of the United Nations and the World Bank toward international comparability resulted in an expansion, both in terms of more countries and a wider range of indicators. In addition to housing and real estate indicators, a huge number of indicators related to socioeconomic development, infrastructure, transport, the urban environment, and local governments have been collected at the turn of the millennium. In the United States, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has taken the lead in preparing an initial set of indicators on 100 large U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (Glickman et al., 1996). In Europe, the Eurostat ‘Urban Audit’ data collection has been providing information and comparable measurements on the different aspects of urban life quality in the European cities since 2003. This brief historical paragraph on housing and urban studies relies mostly on the work of Malpezzi and Mayo (1997). In addition to the data bases presented and works cited therein, representative examples include, among many others, the work of Case and Schiller (1989) and Thibodeau (1995) on housing prices; of Holtz-Eakin and Rosen (1989) and Aschauer (1989) on infrastructure; of Ladd and Yinger (1989) on fiscal and governance measures; and of Rose (1989) and Malpezzi (1996) on urban regulations.
Housing and Urban Development The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is a cabinet department in the executive branch of the United States. Founded in 1965 and assigned to the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the HUD was created to develop and execute policies on housing and metropolises. According to the HUD’s own mission statement, it aims to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all persons within the United States. The HUD is working to strengthen the housing market, to bolster the economy and to protect consumers; to meet the need for quality affordable rental homes; to utilize housing as a platform for improving quality of life; to build inclusive and sustainable communities free from discrimination; and transform the way HUD does business (HUD, 2013: 2). More recently, several subprograms have been established, such as the ‘HUD youthbuild programs’ providing “disadvantaged youth with opportunities for employment, education, leadership development, and training in the construction or rehabilitation of housing for homeless
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individuals and members of low- and very low-income families.” (For more information: http://definitions.uslegal. com/h/hud-youthbuild-programs-hud/.)
The United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UN-HABITAT) The United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN-HABITAT has been a pioneer organization in the collection of urban indicators. In 1978 UN-HABITAT was established through a resolution of the UN General Assembly to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the overall goal of providing adequate shelter for all. In 1991, UN-HABITAT initiated the Housing Indicators Programme, focusing on monitoring the quality of shelters. In 1993 the program was re-developed and became the Urban Indicators Programme, which focuses on a larger range of urban issues. In 1996 and 2001, the Urban Indicators Programme produced the first two global urban indicators databases the Global Urban Indicators Database Version 1 (GUID1) and the Global Urban Indicators Database version 2 (GUID2), presented at the HABITAT II conference and the Istanbulþ5. The aim was to establish regional trends in key urban issues in a global perspective. In 2005, the Monitoring Urban Inequities Programme produced the Global Urban Indicators Database (III). In addition to addressing the HABITAT Agenda, this database provided information on the Millennium Development Goals, particularly for the target on achieving a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers. Since 2006, the Global Urban Indicators Database has been updated annually. (For the list of UN-HABITAT indicators see: http://ww2.unhabitat.org/programmes/guo/documents/ urban_indicators_guidelines.pdf.)
The UN-HABITAT Monitoring System The UN-Habitat monitoring system was established by UN-HABITAT in response to a decision of the United Nations Commission on Human Settlements. It called for a mechanism to monitor the global progress in implementing the HABITAT Agenda and to monitor and evaluate global urban conditions and trends at the international, regional, national, and local level. This monitoring function is provided through two main instruments: Global Urban Observatory (GUO) and Best Practices and Local Leadership programme (BLP). The GUO has the task to monitor and evaluate the global urban conditions and trends. It includes urban indicators, statistics, and city profiles. The BLP was established to make use of information and networks in support of the HABITAT Agenda Implementation. Both programmes operate under the Monitoring Systems Branch, which has the overall mandate to monitor the progress of the HABITAT Agenda and the Millennium Development Goals. (For more information see the UN monitoring system online at: http://ww2.unhabitat.org/ programmes/guo/.)
Eurostat – Urban Audit The Urban Audit is a statistical data collection by Eurostat providing statistical data and information on living conditions in Europe. After a ‘pilot’-audit in 1999, the first full-scale European ‘Urban Audit’ for the then 15 countries of the European Union took place in 2003. In 2004, the project was extended to the 10 new Member States plus Bulgaria, Romania,
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and Turkey. For the 2003/2004 data collection exercise 336 variables were brought together, covering most aspects of urban life. The second full-scale data collection for the Urban Audit covered the time period between 2006 and 2007. It involved 321 European cities in the then 27 countries of the European Union along with 36 additional cities in Norway, Switzerland, and Turkey. The basic philosophy was to deviate as little as possible from the concepts used in the 2003/2004 collection. However, some changes were made with the aim to improve comparability, data availability, and quality (Eurostat, 2014). According to the ‘EU – Cohesion Policy 2007–2013,’ the newest data collection includes 357 European cities providing data with over 330 indicators for the quality of urban life in Europe cities on demography, housing, health, crime, the labor market, economic activity, income disparity, local administration, civic involvement, educational qualifications, cultural infrastructure, and tourism (European Commission, 2013: 1). Data collection has been assembled every 3 years. However according to the Eurostat Web site an annual data collection is being planned for a smaller number of targeted variables. (For more information the indicators and database: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/ region_cities/city_urban/.) In addition to the GEO and the Urban Audit databases, there are many other databases on indicators related to housing and land in an international basis, such as the World Bank Data & Statistics, UNECE Environment and Human Settlements Division, the World Gazetteer, and the European Mortgage Federation.
The Future of Empirical Data on Environment, Human Development, and Urban Studies A main task of the environmental and urban statistics work today is the harmonization and standardization of the definitions and classifications of indicators at the international level. Improved tests and amended theory at an international basis are critical to an enhanced understanding of the state of environment, urban markets, and human well-being. A ‘standard’ list of global indicators can not only help to monitor current global states and trends of living conditions, but it can also represent the impetus for a better understanding of divergences and communalities between regions, countries, and their citizen. Currently, major international research effort was undertaken in most of the countries with support from numerous academics and other researchers, from the United Nations, the World Bank, the European Commission as well as number of national governments. In the light of these past developments, international data collection, collation, analysis and reporting could help us to monitor past and current trends of environmental and urban indicators and to forecast their possible development in the near future. Continued serious and globally concerted work on environmental, urban, and human developmental indicators will improve and illuminate public policy. Additionally it will enhance our basic understanding of the structure and dynamics of today’s rapidly changing global environment, and its impact on living conditions.
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See also: Development and Urbanization; Eco-cities and Sustainable Urbanism; Environmental Conservation and Development: Critical Perspectives; Environmental Policy: Protection and Regulation; Planning Issues and Sustainable Development; Urban Sociology; Urbanization.
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