Observatories

The Apur  Paris Agency for Urbanism has had the  responsibility of setting up six observatories, created  between  2005 and 2009 with the exception of the one, dealing with trade and commerce, which was created in the 1990s. Their development addresses a need among elected members, administrations and institutional partners of the Apur  to follow better, statistics relevant  to each of their specific  domains and to assess ongoing actions.

Developing Observatories manifests, above all, a search for high quality based on data recognised, by the actor-user community, to be sound. Regularly updated they allow comparison with other geographical zones to be made and, being accessible for a number of years, developments to be followed.

The 6 Observatories

• The Observatory of Parisian Families
• The Paris Observatory of Social Inclusion and the Fight against Exclusion
• The Observatory of Parisian Districts and the City of Paris' Policy -La Politique de la Ville-
• Paris Observatory for the Situation of the Disabled
• The Observatory of the Trade and Commerce in Paris Database
• Observatory of Housing and Living Conditions in Paris

The latter is composed of the three following tools:

• Observatory of Lead Poisoning, Lack of Hygiene and Run Down Housing
• Observatory of Hotels Providing Social Accommodation
• Observatory for Preventing the Deterioration of Housing (planned)

The Apur's Role

The Observatories entrusted to the Apur  address social and urban issues. They generally have an extensive statistical content.

The choice of giving responsibility to the Apur for developing these tools  is linked to:

• The make-up of its  Board of Directors which brings together  the State, the City of  Paris, the Regional Council, the  Paris City Transport Authority -RATP-  and the Chamber of  Trade and Commerce. The Apur offers a  favourable framework for the emergence of projects shared by these acting bodies.
• The  multidisciplinary make up of the Apur teams (notably statisticians, economists and IT engineers), render it possible to set up such tools.
  
   

Principles

The Observatories run by the Apur have the following common characteristics:

• A partnership is organised under the auspices of  a department of the City or Department ( one of the 95 main administrative divisions of France) of Paris. Participating partners vary according to the Observatory and the  Government is nearly always involved.
• A Steering Committee and a Monitoring Committee, the former defines directions to be taken the latter follows  through the work carried out.
• The presence of a scientific  expert,  an indisputable scientific authority is chosen to follow the activities of each Observatory and to vouch for the the objectivity of the work and its scientific value.
• The building up of a database:; This is created to capitalise on and follow through all information by filing it according to year, district and type of information, etc.
• Creating documented files: a system of indexing has been developed so that each item can be precisely described (useful for the Observatory, statistical limits, name of issuing bodies, release date, etc.)