Project Urban Audit is a joint initiative of the European Commission and Eurostat, representing a response to the growing information needs about cities. The main objective of the program is to provide objective and comparable statistics on European cities, among others, in the scope of demography, household structure, housing, health, employment, economic activity, income, community involvement, education, environment, culture and tourism. Eurostat is the coordinator of the work, and the performers are national statistical offices, city halls and local governments.
Four editions were carried out: in 1998 - a pilot project in 2003, 2006, 2009 and 2011. At the end of 2013 the 6th edition of the project was implemented. The selection of cities for this round was made by Eurostat, the European Commission and the national statistical institutes according to new definition of a city developed by Eurostat and the EC based on degree of urbanization. According to the adopted methodology on the Urban Audit list is now 68 Polish cities.
The project data was collected for the four spatial levels: the city within the administrative boundaries (Core City - C), larger urban areas (LUZ), sub-city districts (SCD), and the country. Furthermore in the current edition of the project Polish official statistics collects information for new level of spatial aggregation – kernel – which covers the area of Metropolitan Association of Upper Silesia.
In this project, data is collected for the reference year 2013. Moreover, a collection of statistics 2014 is carried out. The project is realized by CSO Regional and Environmental Surveys Division with cooperation of Center for Urban Statistics in Statistical Office in Poznań. The National Urban Audit Coordinator is Małgorzata Stawikowska tel. 022 608 37 83.
All information submitted to the European database are available on the website http://www.urbanaudit.org/ and in the Center for Urban Statistics in Statistical Office in Poznań.
In prepared tables for the base year 2001, 2004, 2008 and 2011 (Table 1 | Table 2) are presented selected information on the socio-economic situation of Polish cities. In addition, tables are supplemented by a brief explanation of methodology.