New data dashboard to drive urban development

Data from 30 cities will be tracked across 18 indicators in a new dashboard released by the Bloomberg organisation and partners.

The Dynamic Cities Dashboard aims to support city and business leaders highlight important elements of city life and to capture improvements and positive change with both progress and performance indicators, versus simply highlighting which cities are furthest ahead.

The dashboard is the culmination of nearly three years of research undertaken and supported by a working group that set out in 2021 to identify how cities could make the most of a post-pandemic recovery.

“The dashboard will be a useful tool for investors to identify new opportunities for government officials and city leaders to make targeted interventions based on proven needs and for citizens to understand how well their cities are performing against key drivers and demand change where needed,” Mikkel Bülow-Lehnsby, Co-founder and Chairperson at Urban Partners, and member of the coalition, told Cities Today.

According to Bülow-Lehnsby, many existing city dashboards focus solely on one aspect of a city’s functionality, such as happiness or mobility.

“The [dashboard] takes a holistic view across every aspect, with 18 indicators under six pillars, which are then also matched to 17 of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals,” he said.

This covers areas such as climate impact, health, liveability, accessibility, innovation and growth. Additionally, seven of 18 indicators (rent burden, wealth growth, clean energy, 5G access, patents, venture capital and urban services) are ranked according to change over time.

“This leads to some surprising rankings where emerging markets surface to the top as opposed to always highlighting high income cities,” he added. “For instance, this is how you get Nairobi as the city to register the greatest average annual reduction in rent burden; how Lagos surfaces as the city to see the biggest jump in the proportion of electricity derived from clean energy; Mumbai as the city to most increase median mobile download speed; or Mexico City to improve urban services the most.”

The coalition wants the next iteration to continue its geographic expansion while filling out less represented archetypes, especially those in different stages of development with lower GDP per capita and slow population growth.

“It would also be interesting to find a second city within the same country, to see if we can identify differences,” said Bülow-Lehnsby. “And of course, we want to keep adding examples and resources related to successful interventions in our case study section that promote progress around any of the pillars or indicators.”

The cities tracked by the dashboard include Auckland, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Casablanca, Copenhagen, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Lagos, London, Manila, Medellín, Mexico City, Montreal, Mumbai, Nairobi, New York, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Riyadh, San Salvador, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Stockholm, Sydney, Tokyo, and Warsaw.

Image: Wrightstudio | Dreamstime.com