Cities

 Cities of Opportunity  Interesting new report on urban demographics from PriceWaterHouse Cooper.  Covers 30 major cities worldwide.  It includes quantitative data on population and affordability as well as qualitative findings on what city dwellers want.

Other useful city data sources include:

• For the UK –  try data and reports from the Centre for Cities. Their flagship publication  Cities Outlook 2014- is an annual report on economic prospects covers 64 of the largest towns and cities in the UK.
• Mercer Quality of Living Index  is a ranking of quality of life and personal safety for the top 50 cities worldwide, summaries available free of charge online.
• European Metromonitor project – LSE Cities  Interesting site which enables you to examine and compare the impact of the financial crisis on individual European cities.  Note you may have to download the latest version of your browser to view this!  It has an interactive map of statistical data on economic output and employment in 150 of Europe’s largest metropolitan economies, from 1995 to 2012.  It allows cross comparison of the impact on different EU nations and between city and other regions.
• Eurostat also has EU city data.
• UNHabitat is the main United Nations body for this area.  Its key publications a wide range of topics ranging from urban infrastructure and sanitation, affordability of housing, urban development and social exclusion.  They include The State of African Cities and The State of the World’s Cities.   It also supports the Urban Lex urban law database which covers urban planning, development and finance policies and legislation worldwide and the Global Urban Observatory which has some GIS data relating to sustainability and development in cities.