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Cities in Europe and Central Asia Database 1992 - 2012

ECA Region, 2015 - 2016
Central
Paula Restrepo Cadavid, Grace Cineas, Sofia Zhukova
Last modified November 30, 2017 Page views 10896 Documentation in PDF Metadata DDI/XML JSON

Identification

IDNO
ECA_2015_CECA_v01_M
Title
Cities in Europe and Central Asia Database 1992 - 2012
Countries
Name Code
ECA Region ECA
Study notes
This research, designed by the World Bank, and supported by the Department for International Development (DFID), aims to highlight the unprecedented transformation of the urban systems in the ECA region in the last decades, and to look at this shifts from the demographic, economic, and spatial prospectives.

Cities in ECA database comprises data from 5,549 cities in 15 countries of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region, as defined by the World Bank Group, and from the United Kingdom and Germany. Database information for each city is in three dimensions: demographic, spatial, and economic.

The starting point to construct the Cities in ECA database was to obtain from each of the countries the list of official cities and these cities' population data. Population data collected for cities falls on or around three years: 1989, 1999, and 2010 (or the latest year available). The official list of "cities" was geo-referenced and overlaid with globally-available spatial data to produce city-level indicators capturing spatial characteristics (e.g., urban footprint) and proxies for economic activity. City-level spatial characteristics, including urban footprints (or extents) for the years 1996, 2000, and 2010 and their temporal evolution, were obtained from the Global Nighttime Lights (NTL) dataset. City-level proxies for economic activity were also estimated based on the NTL dataset. Nighttime Lights (NLS) data is produced by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) - Optical Line Scanner (OLS) database and maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Kind of data
Process-produced data [pro]

Version

Version
v01, edited dataset for public distribution

The Cities in ECA database also includes several variables which result from the intersection of other globally-available spatial data and the location of cities, or which further qualify cities' characteristics - based on their institutional or economic structure-using official data. Below is a description of some of these variables:
- Location fundamentals refer to a series of spatially-concentrated characteristics, which can support the concentration of population and economic activities. These could include natural advantages supporting the development of agricultural activities or spatial characteristics supporting the development of commercial activities-such as having access to navigable waterways. The database includes seven location fundamentals variables: land vegetation, average January temperature, total annual precipitation, percentage forest cover, distance to nearest coast, distance to nearest international border, and distance to closest border.
- Market potential intends to measure the proximity of a city to nearby (national) markets as a city's market potential is determined by the network of cities to which it has access.
- Monotowns are cities whose economies are dominated by one or a few tightly inter-connected industries. The Cities in ECA database includes a dummy variable identifying 224 monotowns in Russia, the only country for which this information was readily available.
- Multi-city agglomeration or agglomerations correspond to cities whose urban footprint extends beyond a single administrative entity. Agglomerations are identified by intersecting the cities' data with the urban footprints produced by the NTL dataset. There are a total of 352 agglomerations composed of 2,358 cities in the 17 countries studied.
Version date
2017

Coverage

Geographic coverage
Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Georgia, Germany, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan
Unit of analysis
- a city

Producers and sponsors

Authoring entity
Name Affiliation
Paula Restrepo Cadavid World Bank
Grace Cineas World Bank
Sofia Zhukova World Bank
Producer(s)
Name Affiliation
Benjamin Stewart World Bank
Katie McWilliams World Bank
Luis E. Quintero World Bank
Funding agencies
Name Abbreviation
Department for International Development, United Kingdom DFID

Data Collection

Dates of collection
Start End
2015-04-01 2016-09-01
Mode of data collection
Other [oth]

Data access

Citation requirements
The use of the datasets must be acknowledged using a citation which would include:
- the identification of the Primary Investigator (including country name);
- the full title of the survey and its acronym (when available), and the year(s) of implementation;
- the survey reference number;
- the source and date of download (for datasets disseminated online).

Example:

Paula Restrepo Cadavid, Grace Cineas, Sofia Zhukova, World Bank. Cities in Europe and Central Asia Database 1992 - 2012 (CECA 1992-2012), Ref. ECA_2015_CECA_v01_M. Dataset downloaded from [URL] on [date].

Contacts

Contact(s)
Name Affiliation Email
Paula Restrepo Cadavid World Bank prestrepocadavid@worldbank.org
Sofia Zhukova World Bank szhukova@worldbank.org

Metadata production

IDNo
DDI_ECA_2015_CECA_v01_M_WB
Producers
Name Abbreviation Affiliation Role
GSU09 - Urban, DRM ECA GSU09 World Bank Sharing of metadata, the dataset and documents
Development Data Group DECDG World Bank Preparing and publishing of the DDI
Production date
2017-11-16
Version
v01 (November 2017)