Last week the Economist Intelligence Unit released its annual Global Cities Liveability Index and, predictably, the rise and fall of Australian cities created a few headlines.
For background, the EIU GLI investigates, scores and ranks large cities on really important items that contribute to quality of life – including healthcare, education, crime and infrastructure. While the study is well credentialed and contributes by comparing global cities in the context of current events, it’s not intended to be that helpful in a local policy context.
The GLI was a major inspiration behind the design and methodology of our latest offer, Living in Place, but with two major differences:
- For one, where the GLI brings a top-down perspective, Living in Place recognises the diversity of Australian local areas by building from the bottom-up. It uses suburb as the base geography, and reports at the sub-LGA and LGA levels, using larger geographies like city, state and nation for context only.
- Secondly, where the GLI analyses characteristics of cities based on how important the researchers deem them to be, Living in Place asks residents what they believe makes somewhere a good place to live, and how they experience those items in their local area. The combination of importance and experience allows us to derive an overall liveability index that is truly resident-led and, in addition, allows us to highlight which specific attributes the community themselves believe need to be maintained and improved to advance quality of life.
Our Living in Place – Learnings and Applications paper presents three examples where Australian councils are using the Living in Place community survey and views.id online reporting and exploratory platform to credibly represent their community’s views in strategic planning and advocacy. You can download the paper here.
We’re always looking for ways to improve, so please feel free to reach out with any feedback and/or if you have any other questions related to Living in Place or the Views reporting and exploratory platform.
