Indicators at the Crossroads: Ideas, Methods and Applications

This paper provides an overview of the development of indicators, with an emphasis on the British urban and regional planning contexts. It then proposes some pointers to set the agenda for future research and development to move forward the development of indicators. The arguments and suggestions ar...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inTown planning review Vol. 74; no. 3; pp. 253 - 279
Main Author Wong, Cecilia
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Liverpool Liverpool University Press 01.07.2003
Subjects
Area planning & development
Census of Population
Colleges & universities
Commuting
Decision making
Economic development
Economic indicators
Employment
Environmental economics
Environmental impact
Environmental policy
Expenditures
Government agencies
Housing needs
Indicators
Quality of life
R&D
Regional planning
Research & development
Research methods
Social accounting
Social research
Social science research
Statistics
Studies
Sustainability
Sustainable cities
Trends
United Kingdom
Urban areas
Urban planning
Urban policy
Urban renewal
Urban studies
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Summary:This paper provides an overview of the development of indicators, with an emphasis on the British urban and regional planning contexts. It then proposes some pointers to set the agenda for future research and development to move forward the development of indicators. The arguments and suggestions are illustrated with findings from a research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council on identifying indicators to measure local economic development potential, and the approach used to develop a town and city indicators database for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to monitor the performance of the Urban White Paper. The discussion focuses on five broad sets of issues, namely the linkage between theories, concepts and measurement in the development of indicators for urban and regional planning; the importance of policy contexts and values in indicator research; the role of social scientists in the process of indicator development; the use of indicators to inform policy decisions and the data infrastructure; and finally the strengths and weaknesses of different analytical methods to provide research synthesis.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ISSN:0041-0020
1478-341X
DOI:10.3828/tpr.74.3.1