November 17, 2014
The World Council on City Data (WCCD) today awarded the City of Toronto a platinum designation for its compliance with ISO 37120 – the first international standard for sustainable cities, which allows cities to compare their service delivery and quality of life with those of other cities globally. The City of Toronto was one of only nine cities to receive the award at a WCCD meeting of mayors and city leaders from around the world in London, England where the first city data was reported according to the international standard.
"As a Foundation Partner of the World Council on City Data, the City of Toronto has been a leader in this initiative from its inception to develop the first international performance standard for sustainable cities," said Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly. "By benchmarking the performance of Toronto's services to those of other global cities, we strive to improve our services and, in turn, the quality of life of our residents."
"Having an international standard methodology to measure city performance allows the City of Toronto to share its better practices in service delivery, learn from other global cities, rank its results relative to those cities, and address common challenges through more informed decision making," said City Manager Joe Pennachetti.
Using a grouping of 100 ISO standard city indicators provides cities with a common language and standardized technical definitions in measuring city performance, as well as a global framework for third party verification of city data. International standardization of city data is important so that the data is reliable and useful for making meaningful comparisons among cities. Comparable data supports more informed and fact-based decision making on urban issues that are important to residents, and will enable cities to share better practices in becoming sustainable and prosperous.
Toronto started its benchmarking and performance reporting efforts on service delivery and quality of life in 1999, in collaboration with other Ontario and Canadian cities through the Ontario Municipal Benchmarking Initiative. This work has included measuring performance in 36 different service delivery areas in support of service improvement.
Toronto identified the need to complement existing benchmarking work within Canada by comparing Toronto to other large global cities. This work started in 2005, when Toronto was first approached by the World Bank to work with them and eight other North and South American cities to develop and populate a set of global city indicators. This work continued with the Global Cities Indicator Facility, based at the University of Toronto, over the past few years and culminated in the formation of the WCCD and release of ISO 37120.
The availability of reliable and comparable indicator data as a result of the ISO 37120 certification process has afforded Toronto the opportunity to work with other WCCD cities to compare, share and learn from each other on different approaches to urban issues such as gridlock, adequate city revenue tools, aging infrastructure, air quality, aging populations, youth unemployment, public safety and social inequity. The WCCD Foundation cities include: Amsterdam, Amman, Barcelona, Bogota, Boston, Buenos Aires, Dubai, Guadalajara, Haiphong, Helsinki, Johannesburg, London, Makati, Makkah, Minna, Melbourne, Rotterdam, Sao Paolo and Shanghai.
Toronto is Canada's largest city, the fourth largest in North America, and home to a diverse population of about 2.8 million people. It is a global centre for business, finance, arts and culture and is consistently ranked one of the world's most livable cities. Toronto is proud to be the Host City for the 2015 Pan American and Parapan American Games. For information on non-emergency City services and programs, Toronto residents, businesses and visitors can visit
http://www.toronto.ca, call 311, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, or follow us @TorontoComms.
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Media contact: Jackie DeSouza, Strategic Communications, 416 919-6500, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
