World Council on City Data announce the addition of a further 100 global cities

The World Council on City Data (WCCD), at a meeting held at London City Hall yesterday, announced that a further 100 global cities have signed expressions of interest and are already building the data sets, in a bid to join the 20 foundation cities in being certified against the ISO37120, the very first international standard of measuring city services and quality of life.

“We are happy to announce that there are another 100 cities at the gate,” said Patricia McCarney, President and CEO of the World Council on City Data. “One hundred cities have signed expressions of interest and are already building the data sets. Our web portal, which we are also launching today, showcases the first set of 20 cities across the 100 data points but there are another 100 cities ready to go and we will be continuing to grow this over the next 6 months.”

At the Global Cities Summit in May 2014, the launch of the World Council on City Data, backed by new International Standards, marked a watershed in city reporting.

By creating an open data platform for cities globally, the World Council on City Data enables cities to sort themselves into peer groups globally, for example by region, population size, GDP per capita or climate type. The 20 founding cities of the World Council come from all continents and include Amman, Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, London, Makati and Shanghai. With ISO standardised data, for the first time cities have an apples-to-apples comparative framework for comparing the outcomes of sustainability initiatives.

“With cities now controlling significant percentages of gross national product throughout the world, it is becoming increasingly clear that cities need clear and concise ways to learn from each other, not continually reinventing the wheel, but sharing information,” said Art Eggleton, Senator for Ontario and Chair of the World Council on City Data. “The WCCD has risen to the challenge by developing the ISO37120, meaning that cities now have a standardised methodology for tracking their progress, their growth and benchmarking against peer cities and discovering opportunities to improve the lives of their citizens.”

At the event, the World Council on City Data also launched its new web portal. This portal was built to accommodate all the data that is coming in for the first time according to ISO37120 and people will be able to visit the website and look at the comparative data for the 20 cities, which have now officially been certified for the first time against ISO37120.