Surabaya, 25 July 2016 – UN-Habitat has developed a tool that can measure the prosperity of a city through its City Prosperity Initiative.

Eduardo Moreno, Director of the Research and Capacity Development at UN-Habitat presented the new tool and comprehensively explained how it can be applied to policy and action for improvement and development.

The tool has been devised, he said, “To help monitor the New Urban Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals.”

“As they adopt the new urban agenda [countries] need to know how and whether this agenda is being implemented or not. This will require monitoring and reporting and the City Prosperity Initiative can do that,” he said.

Addressing poor, inadequate or missing data

Speaking at a press conference at the third Preparatory Committee for the Habitat III, he also stressed that data at city level is very poor, inadequate or often does not exist at all. The City Prosperity Initiative can help countries such as Indonesia to produce and collect data.

The initiative uses data and information of the city to see and analyze what limits of prosperity cities produce, monitors them and makes a conclusion which in turn enhances better institutional coordination, better allocation of resources and obviously results.

The City Prosperity Initiative is a global initiative that enables city authorities to identify opportunities and potential areas of intervention for their cities to become more prosperous. Its composite index comprised of six dimensions serves to define targets and goals that can support the formulation of evidence-based policies, including the definition of city-visions and long-term plans that are both ambitious and measurable.

Mr. Moreno also presented the City Prosperity Initiative web portal which will enable many nationals and local authorities to use it to calculate their prosperity index. The portal allows one to populate it with the relevant information.

He said: “This is a very good tool that will help you understand visually.”