The project aim is through the collection of large volume of statistical data for cities and their functional urban areas (Larger Urban Zones), regarding demographic, social, economic, environmental and cultural aspects of their development, to ensure reliable, consistent and comparable information on geographic and temporal aspect about urban areas of the European continent.
During the previous project phase (Urban Audit 2012), the project aim was achieved by applying a standard definition of a city, thus providing better comparability at European level. To reduce the amount of missing data a methodology for estimation of sample surveys data on municipal and settlement level was developed and implemented. The methodology was formally adopted by Eurostat and was given as an example of good practice. Its implementation enables Bulgaria to provide the highest percentage of required data - more than 95%.
Bulgarian cities, object of survey within this phase of the project, were defined based on the new Eurostat and the Directorate General ‘Regional Policy’ methodology for definition of urban, intermediate and rural administrative-territorial, territorial and geographical units. As a result, the spatial scope of the survey reached 25% of the country territory (18 cities and 58 municipalities forming their agglomeration areas) and 58% of the population is concentrated there.
The methodology for defining urban, intermediate and rural administrative-territorial, territorial and geographical units is available at the following address:
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Urban-rural_typology
The list of units to be surveyed remains unchanged during the present project phase. The list of variables is reduced in order to ensure maximum data availability. A new element is the collection of data at NUTS 3 level along with the data for cities and their functional urban areas.
NSI plans to issue a bilingual (Bulgarian/English) printed publication, which as a part of data dissemination and survey promotion aims to demonstrate the analytical capabilities of the statistical product elaborated. The publication is planned to be issued in April 2015.
