1. European Week of Cities and Regions
Brussels, 9 October 2018
European Week of Cities and Regions
Regions and Cities in OECD countries and beyond: data, tools and on-going work
Paolo Veneri
Head of Territorial Analysis and Statistics Unit
Regional Development Policy Division
Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Local Development and Tourism

2. The OECD Regional Development Work

3. The OECD Regional Development Policy Committee and Working parties
Within the OECD, the work on territorial statistics is of course closely linked to the work on regional development and MLG.
The overall work is monitored by the Regional Development Policy Committee (RDPC) which regroups the delegates of Member countries and partners, such as Colombia..
Besides the Committes, there are 3 specialised working parties on rural, urban and territorial indicators.
The Committee and Working parties are places of exchange, sharing of best practice coordination and guidance.
They are also a place to elaborate standards and validate the wor done by the Secretariat before dissemination.
(CLICK) The particular objective of the Working Party on Territorial Indicators (WPTI) is to:
contribute an evidence based analysis of the regional characteristics, resources, drivers and potential for development
and to improve the understanding of sub-national patterns and dynamics of structural change in all types of regions.
To do that, the team has developed a series of databases and web tools.
Territorial data are then used to produce statistical reports as well as to prepare more thematical projects.
Regional Development Policy Committee (1999)
Regional development policies
Multi-level governance and decentralisation
Working party on territorial indicators (WPTI)
Working party on urban policy
Working party on rural policy
Mandate of the WPTI ( )
“to contribute an evidence based analysis of the regional characteristics, resources, drivers and potential for development and to improve the understanding of sub-national patterns and dynamics of structural change in all types of regions”.

4. At subnational level: At country level:
What are the main OECD ‘territorial’ databases?
At subnational level:
Regional database
Metropolitan database
Let’s focus on the databases.
We have 4 databases generated by this work: 2 at country level and 2 at subnational level.
At country level : even if they concern subnational governements, data are presented at national level.
It is the case for example fo the database on SNG finance and structure:
In the statistical booklet, you can find data on the number of local governments and municipal size in each OECD country as well as data on subnational expenditure, investment, revenue and debt.
We are currently expanding this database on SNG by setting up an World Observatory on SNG finance and investment (with UCLG and partners – covers more than 100 countries).
In addition, we are going to develop this year disaggregated data on regional governemnts finance in the OECD. It will allow comparisons between regional governments concerning their expenditure, investment and revenue.
At territorial level, iour databases contains disaggregated regional and local indicators.
I will focus on these two databases:
regional database
metropolitan databases
At country level:
Subnational Government Structure (transitioning to regional data)

5. The OECD Regional Database
The OECD regional database provides a unique set of comparable statistics and indicators on about regions in 35 countries. 
It currently encompasses yearly time series for around 40 indicators of demography, economic accounts, labour market, social and innovation themes in the OECD member countries and other economies, including Colombia.

6. What is the scale at which indicators are available?
Territorial grid
TL2 large regions are defined as the first administrative tier of subnational government and consists of 389 OCDE large regions. For EU countries TL2 are equivalent to NUTS2, with the exception of Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom for which TL2=NUTS1
TL3 small regions are composed of small regions , TL3 = NUTS3 for EU countries
Regions are subject to change over time, especially for EU countries with a change of classification every 3 years:
 We keep the longest time series when possible
 Territorial grid (pdf) is available in the metadata displayed on Dotstat
National territory
Large regions (TL2)
Small regions (TL3)
What is the scale at which indicators are available?
(CLICK) We make the distinction between the “territorial grid” and (CLICK) “territorial typology”.
The territorial grid comprises 3 levels (CLICK): the national level, the Territorial Level 2 and and the territorial Level 3. „
This classification is officially established (and relatively stable) in all OECD member countries and is used by central governments as a framework for implementing regional policies.
There are 398 TL2 regions: they are defined as the first administrative tier of subnational government and are quite large. For Colombia, it is the equivalent of the departments.
There are TL3 regions: TL3 regions are the smallest official units at which the OECD provides data. Such regions generally correspond to the administrative tier below the national government and the regional level, and they cover the entire territory of countries.
In most countries (e.g. BE, FR, IT, KO, NL, etc. ), TL3 corresponds to provinces or departments.
In some countries they correspond to a definition close to that of a functional or statistical region e.g. economic areas in the United States; census divisions in Canada; development regions in Greece; groups of municipalities in Germany, Mexico, Portugal and the United Kingdom.
In Colombia, there is not TL3 micro-regions but it was an OECD recommendation of the 2017 Territorial Review of Colombia to aggregate the data at the municipal level to define TL3.
This recommendation has been taken on board by the Colombian government as part of the OECD WPTI.
DANE and the DNP are in the process of proposing a division of the country based on around 200 areas, each one regrouping municipalities, corresponding to TL3 level.

7. What is the scale at which indicators are available?
Territorial grid
Territorial typology
National territory
Large regions (TL2)
Small regions (TL3)
This typology was initially based upon municipality density. The European Union updated its typology which relies on the classification of grid-cells according to pre-established density and size thresholds
Intermediate (IN)
Predominantly rural (PR)
Predominantly urban (PU)
Rural close to a city
Rural remote
Lets turn now to the territorial typology. CLICK
Why such typology ? The objective is to take into account geographical differences and allow comparability across micro-regions of the same type (whether urban or rural) across countries.
The “territorial typollogy” classifies TL3 regions into 3 categories : “Predominantly Urban”, “Predominantly Rural and Intermediate.
Predominantly rural regions are also sub-divided into 2 sub-categories : rural remote and Rural close to a city
This typology was initially based upon municipality density but is has been then updated to rely on the classification of grid-cells according to pre-established density and size thresholds

8. The OECD Regional Database
7+ datasets on DotStat:
Demographics
Economics
Labour
Social & Environmental
Innovation
Business Demography (NEW)
- Migration (NEW)
+ Well-being dataset
+ Regional Income distribution dataset
+ Subnational finance
OECD Statistical portal:
Regional eXplorer: ry=0

9. OECD Regional work on well-being
Multidimensional feature
Consistent information on all OECD TL2 regions
Monitor outcomes over time
Include both objective and subjective indicators
Include also distributional information for income

10. Measuring multi-dimension well-being http://www. oecdregionalwellbeing
Updated Today!!

11. Statistical reports
Exemples of graphs and maps which accompany analysis.

12. Regional economic disparities have started narrowing in several countries, but they remain high
Total OECD-wide regional disparities relatively stable but changing composition
Recently, disparities across countries have become relatively more important again
Similar trend in last years if we use the Theil decomposition
Within countries, we see an increased concentration of economic activity in capitals.
On average, they account for more than 26% of national GDP
Importance is rising (relevance of service sector?)
Since 2000, economic gaps between regions have been stable or decreasing in half of the OECD countries, but have been further increasing in the other half. For example, Chile, Mexico and New Zealand significantly narrowed regional economic disparities. In contrast, disparities for countries that were hit the hardest by the global financial crisis (e.g. countries in Southern Europe or Ireland) increased, albeit with some signs of a reversal in recent years.

13. The OECD metropolitan DATABASE
Lets turn to now the OECD Metropolitan Database.
This very innovative and unique database provides a set of economic, environmental, social, labour market and demographic estimated indicators on metropolitan areas.

14. Metropolitan database Consistently defined cities above 500 000 inhabitants across OECD countries
- Population (level and growth)
- Population density
- Population by age
- Total Area
- Urbanised area (change)
- Polycentricity
- Concentration of population in core areas
- Sprawl index
- Local units
- Local units in core area
- Administrative fragmentation
- GDP (level and growth)
- GDP per worker
- Disposable income
- Gini index of disposable income
- Patents application
- Employment (level and change)
- Employment & Unempl. rate
- Labour force (level and change)
- Participation rate
- Income segregation
- Air pollution
- CO2 emissions per capita
- Co2 emissions from transport and energy sector
Demographic
Urban form
Territorial organisation
Labour market/Social
Environmental
Economic and innovation
Where to find the OECD Metropolitan Database?
OECD.Stat 
Metropolitan explorer 

15. Population in cities continues to grow, with the strongest growth in the largest metropolitan areas.
Share of people living in urban agglomerations (at least 50 thousands)
Population in functional urban areas over total national population
The report documents that the importance of cities is rising across the OECD:
Growing population
Increasing economic significance
More innovative and higher firm creation rates
Metropolitan areas with more than 1.5 million inhabitants grew by 13% since 2000.
Overall, 69% of total population in 33 OECD countries live in urban agglomerations of at least 50k people.

16. Metropolitan areas can also be highly unequal and show segregation of different income groups
Inequality in disposable income within metropolitan areas, 2016 or latest available year
While cities are richer and there residents enjoy .igher income levels, they are also more unequal and often segregated.
The Gini index of inequalities is 3.3% higher in metropolitan areas than elsewhere.
Income inequalities can differ substantially across metropolitan areas within the same countries, especially in US, Canada, Chile and Belgium.
Income inequalities can translate into segregation. In 9 out of 11 countries considered, higher income groups show the highest segregation.

17. Thank you!
Look at the country pages of Regions and Cities at a Glance:
Visit the updated web-sites:
In 14 countries out of the 24 countries available, the capital-city region gathers the highest share of foreign-born.
Two thirds of the foreign-born population live in mostly metropolitan regions, 6 percentage points more than the average of the native-born population (58%)
Contacts:

18. OECD Regions and Cities at a Glance 2018
Publication:
Databases:
Metropolitan Areas Database
Regional Database
Data Visualisation:
Metropolitan explorer
Regional well-being:
Divided Cities
Publication
Policy Highlights:
Video:
The Geography of Firm Dynamics. Measuring Business Demography for Regional Development
Publication: demography.htm
Video: