The Intercultural City Index

The Intercultural cities Index and benchmarking tool, which has been prepared with the support of BAK Basel Economics, consists of a number of indicators which allow to

illustrate what intercultural integration means in practice and how it is implemented in specific cities

assess where the city stands in the different policy and governance areas and assess progress over time

enable city-to-city learning by matching good practice and learning needs in specific areas

test different hypotheses about the relationship between intercultural policy and specific policy outcomes such as economic performance and safety

The benchmarking tool illustrates the city profiles "visually", highlighting

the level of achievement of each city

progress over time

comparison with other cities or the network as a whole

The tool involves a combination of

facts: demographic data in particular (primarily quantitative)

inputs: policies, structures (primarily qualitative)

impacts: attitudes and behaviours (primarily qualitative)

Data is collected through a questionnaire to be completed by city officials. Answers are accompanied with examples and references for possible cross-checking. For a comprehensive assessment of city’s policy and its impacts, a questionnaire for the public has also been designed.

The questionnaire has been developed on the basis of the Policy assessment grid which has emerged from the assessment of practice cities across Europe and has been validated by the 11 cities involved in the pilot.

The graphs below illustrate the output of the index. The last graph shows that there is a slight correlation between level of intercultural policy of a city and its level of economic development. Cities which want to participate in the Index data-collection to contact irena.guidikova@coe.int. The Index questionnaire exists for the moment in English, French, German, Italian and Russian.