There are numerous rankings and indexes intended to summarise the comparative performance of cities around the world. They vary widely in their purpose, thematic focus, scope, data sources and methods. As a consequence their results are not always consistent, and it is often not clear what actions cities need to take if they wish to improve their position.

In developing their policies, city leaders will need to know answers to key questions such as:

• How is my city performing? And what are the trends?
• Are we doing a good job in connecting learning with its application for innovation, and economic and social development?
• How do we compare with others? What could we do better to improve things?
• What will be the likely consequences if we continue as we are?
• How can we get government, business, educators and civic society to work together?

PASCAL International Observatory has launched an international research and development programme Learning Cities 2020 to help cities learn and address the issues they face, and to develop effective policy responses to those issues prioritised.

The Learning Cities 2020 programme has several strands, these are introduced in the paper featured below...