Commonwealth Association of Architects Data Platform
As part of the response to the findings of the Survey of the built environment professions in the Commonwealth, the Commonwealth Association of Architects (CAA) has created a data platform to serve as an accessible source of information for all those interested in sustainable urbanisation in the Commonwealth.
This platform is part of the CAA’s contribution to the Commonwealth Sustainable Cities Initiative, which it has launched together with the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the Commonwealth Association of Planners, the Commonwealth Local Government Forum and The Prince’s Foundation.
The partners recognise that the delivery of well-planned cities relies upon a more integrated and evidence-based approach and hopes that the platform will contribute to increased inter-disciplinary, cross sector collaboration between different stakeholder groups.
As the world works towards achieving the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, the CAA recognises the opportunity to leverage the unique power of the Commonwealth to engage with these issues through several initiatives, like this platform.
What the platform currently shows
The data platform provides the following information for Commonwealth countries:
- Rates of urbanisation
- Projected urban population growth to 2050
- Rates of CO2 emissions in total and per person
- Climate Risk Index assessed by Germanwatch
- Gross National Income per capita in USD at purchasing power parity
- Location of capital cities and secondary cities:Data on secondary cities supplied by Nicolas Galzara from the NYU Marron Institute of Land Management, authors of the Atlas of Urban Expansion.
- Built environment professionals: All known professional institutes representing built environment professionals, i.e. architects, engineers, town planners and quantity surveyors, with ratios of built environment professionals per 1,000 head of population where known.
- Universities: Commonwealth members of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), UN Habitat University Partnership (UNI), Association of African Planning Schools (APPS), and the African Urban Research Institute (AURI)
- Local government: Members of the Commonwealth Sustainable Cities Network (CSCN), managed by the Commonwealth Local Government Forum.
Note that some data may not be visible until the map is magnified sufficiently.
The information in the platform has been sourced from the Survey of the built environment professions in the Commonwealth, UN Habitat and the World Bank, unless otherwise shown. Our aim is to further develop and enrich the platform.
Get involved
If you would like to get involved in the development of the data platform, please contact us.
Acknowledgements
The data platform is developed jointly by the CAA and Joseph Walters, a PhD student at the Nottingham Geospatial Institute, University of Nottingham. The CAA would like to express its thanks to all contributing organisations and to Esri (UK) Ltd for accepting them as a member of its Non-Profit Programme and enabling the use of their industry standard Geographic Information System, known as ArcGIS.