A new international standard known as “ISO 37120” lays out 46 measures that cities on any continent can measure their performance by.

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The phrase “ISO standard” is something you might find on the base of a light bulb, under your computer keyboard or in the owner’s manual for your refrigerator. It means that these products are made in a way that complies with international standards of quality and compatibility. There are ISOs for financial management, electrical engineering, chemical technology — you name it.

But now, the first-ever set of ISO standards for world cities has been created. And the implications are dramatic. City policymakers will have objective standards to compare their services and performance with other cities around the world. And just as significant, the people of cities — civic, business organizations, ordinary citizens — will be able to access the same new global standards. This means they can ask city leaders tough questions, stoking debate about their own city’s performance on the basis of verified measures ranging from education to public safety to water and sanitation.

The late May start-up list of city indicators by the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization seems, at a glance, straightforward enough. What’s the particulate matter in a city’s air? Debt service as a percentage of the city’s own revenue? Average life expectancy? Green area per 100,000 residents? The percentage of the city population with regular solid waste collection? The share of the city population that lives in slums?

But many cities, up to now, haven’t recorded data on all those indicators. Or if they did, they were inconsistent in their precise definitions, making it difficult to make apples-to-apples comparisons of cities across continents and diverse societies. Many organizations, in independent media and special interest groups, issue rankings of cities. But in 2008, when the Global Cities Indicators Facility at the University of Toronto compared rankings that had been applied to seven prominent world cities, it turned out that only six of the 1,200 indicators being applied were exactly the same....Continue Reading

> via citylab.com