The continued decline in Australian housing affordability, and focus on dwelling targets highlights the need for an overhaul in how decision-makers are approaching the complex problems at hand.
Kylie Legge is an experienced place maker specialising in the creation and management of places that attract people and build connection. She is the CEO & Founder of Place Score, a groundbreaking place experience, diagnostic, engagement, benchmarking, tracking and advisory company. Place Score asks local people about the places they know best, to help governments and developers prioritise community benefits in their planning decisions. Its purpose is to make places better for people by providing community insights that help us understand local values and current place experience to build a clear evidence base for planning and investment.
When we started Place Score I estimated that around $600m was being spent on community engagement by governments across Australia each year. Unfortunately the majority of the data being collected by communities was being wasted—used for one project and then filed away. That was the first problem we wanted to solve and we did it by creating a methodology where all data we collect goes into Place Score’s National Benchmark and is designed for multiple uses—from planning, to prioritisation and tracking—across topics ranging from open space, housing, sustainability, management and more.
I hope that there is never a time when talking with our communities is less important than accessing secondary data from phones and credit cards, however, community engagement, what we call social research, has needed an overhaul. New methodologies and associated technology like Place Score’s Liveability Platform provide the much needed rigor, transparency, and consistency that governments and the private sector need in order to make evidence-based decisions.
The State of Place report captures the key findings of the 2023 Australian Liveability Census—Australia’s largest social research project. Place Score has been collecting liveability data since 2019, however, it wasn’t until 2021 that we ran the first national project. We recognised that there was no consistent and rigorous way that local communities could tell planners and decision makers what it was like to live in local neighbourhoods.
In 2023, over 26,000 people rated the liveability of their local neighbourhoods by assessing 50 different attributes from the ‘Amount of open space’ to the ‘Sense of belonging’. Over 1.25 million individual ratings were collected to generate liveability performance scores out of 100, known as Place Experience (PX).
There are four universal themes across all states, territories, ages and genders; an ideal neighbourhood would be green, walkable, well maintained and close to amenity. While there was a bigger spike towards these attributes in 2021, during Covid lockdowns, they still matter to more people than pre covid. In addition, the only metric to continue to rise in importance is “Access to neighbourhood amenities” which supports policy shifts towards more compact cities.
Decision makers are often shocked when we share just how important active modal choices are to the majority of Australians. ‘Walking, cycling and jogging paths that connect housing to local amenity’ is ranked #5 nationally, while ‘Car accessibility and parking’ is ranked #31. There is a clear trend, supported by demographic preferences, that future neighbourhoods need to be more walkable and well connected to public transport. There are lots of ideas and reasons provided in the over 38,000 community ideas for local improvements; from cost of living pressures, to sustainability, and having the opportunity for social connection.
Unfortunately, there is a pretty clear correlation between liveability and affordability—more liveable places are not considered affordable and vice versa.
The real problem lies with the places that are considered affordable. They are definitely rated less liveable by their communities, are more likely to be lower on the SEIFA index (Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas) and their communities are more likely to report lower levels of mental health. The data shows us that we can not focus solely on housing supply targets, we need to ensure that we are investing in future communities that are green, offer a range of housing, are self sufficient and encourage social connections.
The first step is to not start with a ‘tabula rasa’ approach that flattens the land and removes all vegetation. ‘Elements of the natural environment’ is the #1 shared value of an ideal neighbourhood across the whole country and every age group. Keeping established trees in lower density neighbourhoods that are under pressure to increase populations is a really delicate balance and often it’s the trees that have to give way to allow for car park excavations and the like.
The pressure to maximise returns on land values often means the open space is reduced, located where housing can’t be built, spread around the edges of buildings not allowing deep soil planting, or some other compromise. A great neighbourhood where people thrive would consider shared spaces such as footpaths, parks and playgrounds as essential social infrastructure just as important as roads and waste management.
The focus of increasing density in established, well serviced neighbourhoods should be less on providing car parks and more on maintaining local character—after all the reason we want more people to live in these places is because they are closer to amenities. This will also reduce the anxiety of current residents that more development will ‘ruin their neighbourhood’.
Place Score always says that we measure what matters; if the only KPI is the amount of housing, then that is all we will get. We need new measures that focus on outcomes not just outputs. We are really proud of the work we have been doing in NSW to provide liveability metrics and data to LGA’s to align with strategic and corporate plans—it’s this kind of human-centric approach that Place Score believes will support improved liveability—by responding to community values and understanding what is impacting them negatively.
It’s really important to not be discouraged, every place has something that locals like and that is an opportunity to build pride and a unique point of difference that could then attract more like-minded residents. That’s what is unique about the Place Score methodology—it isn’t about rankings but about providing insights that the government can actually action.
