Most international organizations and databases generally provide only country level data. Below are good websites for reliable links to statistical sources. Most city data has to come from official government websites of the city or country, or from statistical abstracts and handbooks of the individual country.
START YOUR SEARCH in the journal Cities, which has a City Profile series and publishes articles on many aspects of urban policy and planning. Search for [your city name] "city profile"; for example, auckland "city profile"
Do a Mardigian Search (on the Start Finding Sources page) for the [name of your city] and look for recent news articles about it (see #4 under Search FAQs).
- Try searches for the [name of your city] and combine it with specific topics such as urbanization, demographics, crime, housing or transportation.
- This will search all of the library's databases at once for this specific information about your city, and you can focus your search results to scholarly articles, newspaper articles, and magazine articles about your city.
Go to the library's Global Road Warrior database, a comprehensive cultural, business, and travel database with in-depth coverage of 175 countries.
You will probably also try searching Google to find specific information about your city. That's okay, but make sure you evaluate the reliability of the information and the website closely.
Data and Statistics for Global Cities
- OECD Regions & Cities At a Glance (part of OECD iLibrary) (Library database)
- International Census Statistical Sites (compiled by US Census Bureau)
- United Nations
- World Cities Report: This dataset contains data on metropolitan regions with demographic, labour, innovation and economic statistics by population, regional surface, population density, labour force, employment, unemployment, GDP, GDP per capita, PCT patent applications, and elderly dependency ratio.
- UN-Habitat (Sustainable Urbanization Program)
- World Urbanization Prospects
- World Cities Culture Forum
