Overall, the project provides support for the importance of regular monitoring of indicators for identifying emerging urban issues. Although, inter-city comparisons are useful to assess comparative status and progress, intra-city monitoring and indicators are crucial to good practices for managing urban systems. The partnerships of UCGIS universities and their international collaborators emphasize the strengthening of local capacity, wherein issues are clarified and key stakeholders are involved to set priorities through an informed consultative process. This process follows and confirms the local environmental action planing process used for sustainable planning (Leitmann, 1999).

Within the context of the mutual goals of HUD and UCGIS for the project, the unique perspective and approach of each university results in a broader set of findings than could be achieved by a single perspective and approach. The following summarizes the important findings from each university team.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign team used GIS to explore differences in accessibility to and quality of urban infrastructure for residential locations in selected cities in different countries. This effort demonstrates the importance of spatial analysis and GIS to measure accessibility. Measuring accessibility at the neighborhood level is an important issue in various countries. Further, this effort illustrates the need for and use of web-based training tools for GIS instruction and collaboration with partners.

Variations in local technical capacity of the partners clearly influence the distinct needs and priorities of the project partners in terms of capacity building. For Cape Town, which participated in this project with a reliable database and qualified staff, the priority need was in application of the tools that could measure levels of accessibility for different urban indicators. But for Gaborone the value of the project was in creation of an operable database on urban indicators and training of their staff in basic use of GIS and accessibility measures.

UIUC suggests that a Phase 2 continuation focus on 1) close collaborative enhancement of tools and capabilities in use rather than on creation of fixed training modules, and 2) using indicators to assess infrastructure services as evolving capabilities during urbanization.

Figure 2: The University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Web Site

The University of Iowa team effort demonstrates how a set of GIS instruction modules designed for domestic analysis of health indices and health care planning can be converted and adapted to web-based training tools and applied by international partners. The University of Iowa team is composed of persons who have worked together over a period of years allowing them to quickly focus on the substantive issues to advance the state-of-the-art of development of small-area indicators using socio-economic and health data.

University of Iowa partners at the National Institute of Urban Affairs, New Delhi and the University of Ibadan are developing data sets for their respective areas to be incorporated into the Training Labs on the Website for use in their countries. In India, these data represent a sub-set of the more than 3000 slum areas in and around New Delhi where material and child health problems are known to be acute. In Ibadan Nigeria, data on environmental conditions and several relevant health variables are being collected for local neighborhoods within Metropolitan Ibadan.

The Virginia Commonwealth University team developed sub-city urban indicators in two quite different contexts - Shanghai and Guatemala City. The size and issue differences of the two regions reinforce the need for local collaborators and the development of different types of indicators. One set of indicators will not serve both regions. The mapping of indicators and the training modules for mapping serves to illustrate the importance of collaborative process of mapping for analysis of spatial patterns of urban indicators. This work lays the foundation for monitoring trends in the two regions. Monitoring change in the spatial patterns of urban indicators is of great interest in both regions.

As a result of exchanges, the collaborative relationships with VCU international partners have strengthened significantly. Such relationships will continue and benefit future research. In the case of Guatemala City, the partnership has evolved into an institutional research exchange program between VCU and the Faculty of Architecture of the University of San Carlos, beyond the scope of this research. Efforts in transferring indicator research and GIS mapping expertise also have contributed to the building of local capacity. In the case of Shanghai, VCU will make the research results available to local planning policy-makers. The VCU research efforts in bringing together information from diverse sources are likely to help them overcome the lack of coherent and consistent data in their decision-making process.

West Virginia University's team worked to gain knowledge on the state of urban quality in a very challenging region -  Beira, Mozambique. They employed GIS, and transferred the technology locally to establish a quantitative baseline of spatial data to evaluate existing conditions and monitor change. They worked with stakeholders to evaluate the effectiveness of policies and programs intended to improve socially and economically distressed communities, increase home ownership, and reduce homelessness.

The initial assumption that pilot projects could draw/rely on the availability and applicability of UN derived urban indicators to develop a GIS for monitoring and analyzing urban indicators at the sub-city level was too ambitious and unrealistic for two reasons:

1. UN urban indicators, though providing a useful starting point, were intended for country comparisons rather than sub-city level analysis. Since urban problems are contextually based and solutions have to be developed locally, sub-city level analysis of indicators requires the generation of data that is situation specific. This is an important lesson from the Beira experience.

2. Unlike cities in other countries, data on key UN urban indicators were found to be either incomplete or non-existent. This was not surprising given that Mozambique only recently emerged from a long protracted civil war, and therefore faces major challenges on many fronts including reconstituting critical databases for urban policy analysis and institutional capacity building.

The conditions of a poor data environment presented both constraints and opportunities. Specifically, the need to generate new data forced an early decision concerning the choice of indicators and the methods of analysis. In this respect, the training modules developed both reflect the desire and need to familiarize the user with basic techniques for selecting appropriate indicators, data gathering methods, mapping as well as techniques for integrating disparate data sources to analyze and monitor urban indicators.

The University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee team operated in the context of a broader, but still developing relationship between UWM and a university in Senegal. Participatory methods and techniques were used to increase awareness among key decision makers of the advantages in using urban indicators and GI technologies to make policy decisions and day-to-day management decisions. This participatory approach facilitated a robust discussion regarding the selection of appropriate indicators to be used in sub-city analysis. The UWM team has developed an analysis template that allows decision-makers to examine large data sets with many variables in order to investigate a specific problem. This analysis template allows a range of users to examine the same data set to provide relevant information to address different problems such as to solve day-to-day management decisions, strategic planning, emergency services delivery, and for developing policy options.

The UWM participatory approach facilitated a robust discussion regarding the selection of appropriate indicators that can be used in sub-city analysis. The UWM team learned that decision-makers in different sectors (e.g., health, urbanism, education) require context-specific indicators that are sometimes not consistent with the indicators selected for use by the Global Urban Observatory. Decision-makers in different sectors expressed a strong desire to be equipped with advanced training (skills) in conducting analyses that integrate their conventional approaches using indicator data with the appropriate use of GIS to better achieve their sectoral objectives.