Over the past few years there have been a proliferation of city benchmarking indexes and data tools that enable the comparison of different phenomenon across cities.  A recent Jones Lang LaSalle report details 150 of them.  Such indexes are composed of composites of key indicators and are proported to give an indication of city performance vis-a-vis other locales and to judge how city administrations and policies are fairing.  Below are some links to some interactive city benchmarking sites that allow the comparison of selected cities.  Our interests in such benchmarking is in the politics of indicator selection and the formulation of indices, and how the data are employed, a topic that we’ve just started to examine on the ProgCity project.

NYC Global Innovation Exchange: http://www.nyc.gov/html/ia/gprb/html/global/global.shtml

OPENCities Monitor: http://www.opencities.eu/web/index.php?monitor_en

Siemens Green City Index: http://www.siemens.com/entry/cc/en/greencityindex.htm

Intercultural City Index: http://www.culturalpolicies.net/web/intercultural-cities-charts.php

Smart cities index (mid-size cites , 100-500K population): http://www.smart-cities.eu/benchmarking.html

Brookings GlobalMonitor: http://www.brookings.edu/research/interactives/global-metro-monitor-3

McKinsey Urban World: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/urbanization/urban_world

LSE European Metromonitor: http://labs.lsecities.net/eumm/m/metromonitor