1. Eric Gonnard, OECD eric.gonnard@oecd.org
Latest work on regional statistics and analysis at OECD
Eurostat Working Group on Regional and Urban Statistics
1-2 October 2012
Eurostat Headquarters, Luxembourg
Eric Gonnard, OECD

2. Outline
Metropolitan areas
Measuring local and regional wellbeing for policy making
Regional statistics: work in progress

3. Metropolitan areas: background
Objective:
Policies need reflect the reality of where people live and work (functional economic areas), as do the institutions that design and implement such policies (an example is the provision of public services).
Individual cities are interested in comparing their performance with “similar peers” around the world.
The connections between cities and with surrounding areas have important implications for the location of economic production, in turn affecting national growth and quality of life.
Method:
Under the guidance of the OECD Working Party on Territorial Indicators, and carried out jointly with the EC and Eurostat
It identifies urban areas beyond city boundaries, as integrated labour market areas (using population density and travel-to- work flows).
It is applied to 29 OECD countries and identifies urban areas of different size: small urban, medium-sized urban, metropolitan and large metropolitan
It allows comparisons among the different forms that urbanisation takes (densely populated centres and their hinterlands, sprawling, polycentric connected cities, etc.)

4. Metropolitan areas: results (1/2)
→ How does the new approach change our views of cities?
Paris doesn’t match the city administrative boundaries whereas Rome is the reverse
The core areas are composed by single municipalities with more than 50% of population living within a high density urban cluster (contiguous dense grid cells above 1,500 people per km2)
The hinterland area is identified by all those municipalities that send to the core area at least 15% of their workforce.

5. Metropolitan areas: results (1/2)
Two-thirds of the OECD population live in urban areas, but urban systems differ across countries:
21 million Canadians living in urban areas, half of them reside in large metropolitan areas;
Around same urban population in in Poland, only 25% live in large metropolitan areas, while half of them reside in cities with fewer than 500 000 people.
Percentage of urban population by city size (2008)

6. Metropolitan areas: output and next steps
Outputs:
Results have been presented to the OECD Committee on Statistics (CSTAT) on 4 June 2012
Report: “Redefining urban: a new way to measure metropolitan areas”
Policy brief
Interactive maps
Preliminary estimates of GDP, population, air pollution, CO2 emissions
All information available on:
Further developments:
Extend the definition to the remaining OECD countries and adapt it to non OECD countries. Eurostat has applied it to all the EU plus Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Croatia as part of the Urban Audit
Increase available statistics for the 2 largest city types (Metropolitan areas database)
Agree on a set of variables (economic, innovation, environment)
Use adjusting techniques to produce new information at the geographical level of interest by integrating GIS with other statistical sources.
Update yearly the metropolitan areas database (MAD) and make it available online
This harmonized definition of functional urban areas improves comparability and policy implications, provides a guide for national and city governments to plan infrastructure, transportation, housing and schools, space for culture and recreation.
Developed with EC-Eurostat, inputs from countries, link with National Statistical Offices and OECD CSTAT;
Balance international comparability and National definitions in use;
Make the methodology and the urban areas available (report and online database) for further refinements;
Further analysis on the potential of inclusive growth in medium-sized urban areas and analysis of governance structure

7. Measuring local and regional well-being
Background:
After the OECD Better Life initiative, launched at the 2011 Ministerial Council, with a set of comparable well-being indicators at national level, a need has been expressed for considering the regional/local dimension, and
in the frame of the preparation of the 4th OECD World Forum, October 2012 in India dedicated to measuring well-being and progress for policy development and policy making,
The OECD Working Party on Territorial Indicators (WPTI) organised in June 2012 a workshop on “Measuring well-being to enhance local and regional development policy” with the objectives of helping policy-makers
to identify the ultimate target for their policies,
to assess the results of regional policies and monitor progress.
Conclusions of the workshop:
→ The territory as an important layer for (i) reading well being measures, and (ii) as the place where well being matters for policy purposes.
→ Action: the secretariat will develop a project over the next TDPC biannual programme of work with as a main output a report to be issued in October with the following features:
• Research agenda on different geographies regions and metropolitan areas. The research agenda and methods to increase available well-being indicators will be discussed at the meetings of the WPTI.
• The development of new indicators of well-being at regional level will be also done in coordination with the OECD Committee of Statistics
• A first set of indicators is expected for the end of 2013
• Visualisation of the regional indicators of well-being through a web-tool such as the Better Life Index.
• The work will include some case studies focused on regional and local use of wellbeing measures to improve policymaking. Italy, Denmark, United Kingdom, United States and Mexico have already expressed their interest in participating as case studies

8. Regional statistics work in progress
Preparation of the next WPTI, including:
Rural-urban: paper on impact of urban areas on rural ones; preliminary results from regional case studies and surveys
Well being indicators for regions and metro areas, paper on accessibility indicators
Discussion about the table of content of the next Regions at a Glance (to be issued on the web on November 2013, and in March 2014 for the paper publication)
Preparation of the data collection through questionnaire
Online visualization of regional data

9. Thanks for your attention!
More information on the OECD work on regional statistics: