There is an increasing need for the assessment of urban development rates in the world. In modern Russia, this need is reaffirmed by the transfor¬mation of regional economies, the economic acceleration of many major cities, and by the active introduction of strategic management tools (KPI, etc.). The article anal¬yses the current indexes and rankings of urban development. The author ex¬plored the main methodological approaches to the assessment of the rate of urban development. One of the topical issues of contemporary research on this subject in Russia is an attempt to create comprehensive methods of as-sessing urban de¬velopment without taking into account the specifics of urban management and the scale of regional economy. In this regard, the paper pro-vides a critical analy¬sis of approaches to urban development indicators, index-es and rankings. The author drew conclusions about the most optimal ap-proaches towards the for¬mation and use of data in city management in Russia. The author used gen¬eral scientific research methods (logical and structural analysis and the meth¬od of generalization), and statistical analysis (grouping, comparison and gen¬eralization). The results of the study include recommen¬dations for city data management and for decision-making in knowledge man¬agement.