Urban connections: international survey of city leadership 2014-2015

Acuto, Michele and Rapoport, Elizabeth (2020). Urban connections: international survey of city leadership 2014-2015. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-852683

What does ‘city leadership’ entail in an increasingly networked global scenario? How do city leaders respond to global challenges and contribute to global governance? How are they influenced by city- to-city networking? How does city leadership translate into strategic responses to global challenges? Urban Gateways is designed to improve our understanding of how city leadership translates into long-term strategic visions, how it relates and contributes to global governance and how this global action is perceived ‘on the ground’ in cities.

Urban Gateways will provide a global overview of the city leadership and strategic plans in both developing and developed countries, highlighting leadership approaches, strategic trends, foresight drivers and major hindrances in the development of strategic urban plans addressing global challenges. The project focuses both on major global cities and second-tier cities to offer not only international comparative assessments but also multi- tiered considerations that de-centre globalist models of international and urban research.

Data description (abstract)

This dataset contains the responses of 292 academic experts asked to review the state of city leadership in 202 cities internationally, addressing a series of queries as to the shape, performance and pressing challenges city leadership confronts in countries around the world.

Data creators:

Creator Name	Affiliation	ORCID (as URL)
Acuto Michele	University College London	http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4320-0531
Rapoport Elizabeth	Urban Land Institute (formerly of UCL)

Contributors:

Name	Affiliation	ORCID (as URL)
Rapoport Elizabeth	Urban Land Institute (formerly of UCL)

Sponsors:

Economic and Social Research Council

Grant reference:

ES/K007742/1

Topic classification:

Politics

Keywords:

city leadership, urban governance, urban policy

Project title:

Urban gateways: can global cities provide leadership for global governance?

Grant holders:

Michele Acuto

Project dates:

From	To
2 December 2013	23 December 2016

Date published:

27 Mar 2017 13:04

Last modified:

04 Aug 2020 11:30

Coverage and Methodology

Temporal coverage:

From	To
2 June 2014	21 December 2015

Collection period:

Date from:	Date to:
2 December 2013	23 December 2016

Geographical area:

Global (185 countries)

Country:

World Wide

Spatial unit:

Administrative > Council Areas
Administrative > Districts (Metropolitan)
Administrative > Greater London

Data collection method:

The team began by selecting a target group of 200 cities. The ethos behind these selection criteria was that comparative urban research should aim to incorporate the experiences of a diverse array of cities across both the global North and South. In particular we wished to gather viewpoints that might serve as alternatives to the well-known perspectives of heavily researched so-called ‘global’ and ‘mega’ cities. The team developed an initial list of 200 cities with a roughly equal distribution among regions of the world and city size. The team grouped cities into six regions, based on the regions used by the World Bank. These were East Asia and the Pacific (including Oceania), Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, South and Central Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. One deviation from the World Bank approach was our grouping of North America and Europe. The team also included several ‘outlier’ cities, that were geographically isolated, such as island cities (such as Male in the Maldives) and cities in remote regions of the world (Nuuk in Greenland). The research team then sought to identify at least one expert per city to address a series of questions as to the current shape, challenges and performance of city leadership in each city.
Experts were selected on the basis of their academic track record (several recognisable publications) of expertise on a specific city in the pool of 200 (finally at 202 in total) cities surveyed.

Observation unit:

Organization, Event/Process, Geographic unit, Time unit, Other

Kind of data:

Numeric, Text

Type of data:

Other surveys, Qualitative and mixed methods data

Resource language:

English

Access and Administration