Why it's time to consider new measures of city liveability

Billie Giles-Corti (0424 441 861 or billie.giles-corti@rmit.edu.au)

Topics: Health and liveability, urban liveability, healthy transport.

“The purpose of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Liveability Index is to inform companies about the hardship loadings global executives should receive when moving to cities around the globe. Suffice is to say, executives relocating to Australian cities receive no hardship allowance, as there are few, in any challenges to living standards here.

“This index tells us little about the lived experience of local residents. For example do all residents have proximate access to shops, schools, services, public open space and public transport? These are the issues important to local residents.

“The index also provides no insights into whether cities are healthy and sustainable. For example, many of the most liveable cities in its rankings, have some of the largest ecological footprints.

“From the perspective of whether cities are healthy and sustainable, Vienna deserves to be ranked higher than Melbourne. It has an exceptional public transport system, actively encourages active transport and as a consequence, has a much lower ecological footprint than Melbourne or any other Australian city.

“In this year’s ranking, the rankings were influenced by the response to COVID. The Top 10 cities had fewer COVID restrictions, with few restrictions on attending theatre, sport and music, no mask requirements and less stress on the health care system. Is this what’s really important? Or is it the number of deaths from COVID? This would seem more important to me.”

Professor Billie Giles-Corti is a Distinguished Professor and an Inaugural Vice Chancellor’s Professorial Fellow at RMIT University. She currently leads the Healthy Liveable Cities Lab in RMIT’s Centre for Urban Research. 

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Melanie Davern (0405 562 735 or melanie.davern@rmit.edu.au)

Topics: Liveability, urban planning, policy

“It's time we moved on from these inter-city comparisons and thought more deliberately about intra-city results. At the Australian Urban Observatory, we look at liveability at the neighbourhood and suburb levels and use evidence to lift liveability where it’s needed most. Our data shows that not everywhere in Melbourne performs as well as the EIU rankings may suggest.

“The Economist Intelligence Unit rankings compare the liveability of whole cities; but we need to understand the liveability of neighbourhoods and suburbs within a city, to understand what action and planning is needed to increase the liveability of areas and address health inequities.

“We have found that liveability is very good in most of the 21 cities that we measure at the AUO, including Melbourne, but what concerns me most is addressing the inequities in liveability in neighbourhoods across the country. The EIU ranking doesn’t track liveability over time, which is really important to see comparative improvements over time.

“Intracity disparity in liveability is so important, because local lived environments have such an influence on health and also because the areas with lower liveability are also home to areas of socio-economic disadvantage, and people who live in areas of socio-economic disadvantage often have poorer health outcomes and more long-term health problems."

A/Prof Melanie Davern is the Director of the Australian Urban Observatory (auo.org.au) located within the Centre for Urban Research. 

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