The publication of Urban Indicators is an adaptation at the national level of the EU Urban Audit project (currently called Data Collection for City and Sub-national Statistics), promoted by the Directorate-General of Regional and Urban Policy of the European Commission (DG Regio), in collaboration with Eurostat.

The project aims to respond to the growing demand for information that will make it possible to evaluate living conditions in European cities through indicators obtained with a methodology that is comparable both at the national and international levels.

The project currently has 40 indicators that are published annually, with information for different regional scopes, with a series of selected cities, large cities, functional urban areas, municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants and sub-municipal zones (Sub-city Districts).

The indicators are divided into seven thematic spheres: demographics, social aspects, economic aspects, training and education, land surface and use, travel and transport, and tourism.