Unlocking the potential of local data to foster sustainable and livable cities

Evidence-based policies and actions are key for achieving sustainable urbanisation and move towards the realisation of SDGs. Data and quantitative evidence for different territorial levels, from national to regional and local scale, are essential tools for policy makers and all stakeholders involved.
Global and context-specific data and indicators are equally important to inform policies: they allow to properly assess and monitor trends where they happen, while setting the right terms of comparison to observe performances across different cities and territories.
The OECD has a long-standing commitment to support evidence-based policy to improve people's well-being in all regions and cities through testing and producing new indicators, methods and analysis, and promoting the use of data and indicators in all phases of policymaking.
Many OECD-led initiatives are contributing to produce precise and timely data for national, regional and local governments, which are also tools for promoting informed dialogues across levels of government and sectors of society, integrating both a national and an international perspective.
The availability of data and indicators immediately relevant for policy priorities is one of the reasons that motivated the OECD to develop the Municipal and Local Data Platform. The Platform makes indicators available at very granular spatial scale, allowing to compare performances between specific territories and placing them in a wider regional, national and international context. The indicators cover various SDG-relevant topics, from housing and demography to environment and climate change impacts, while the user interface facilitates the access to the information and its interpretation vis-à-vis specific policy questions.
To support policy making, also frameworks help to facilitate data and indicators’ use for specific applications. The OECD has developed a framework of indicators to localise the SDG targets and support regions and cities in measuring the distance to each of the 17 SDGs. The tool has been recently updated to include the most recent data of more than 600 cities and regions in OECD countries and beyond.
This event aims to facilitate the sharing of innovative data tools, best practices and innovative strategies among cities, regions and international organisations for integrating quantitative evidence and SDG-relevant indicators into local policy making. It will build on the expertise of panelists from international organisations including the OECD, the European Commission and UCLG, and provide a platform for stakeholders to discuss the development and implementation of context-specific metrics that will enhance the ability to monitor and accelerate progress towards the 2030 Agenda.