The Australian Urban Observatory at RMIT University is delighted to invite you to the online launch of the new and improved AUO Map 2.0 on Tuesday the 10th of September at 1pm.
During Social Sciences Week, the Australian Urban Observatory team will be releasing an enhanced AUO digital map portal that supports faster, more efficient and insightful observation and understanding of city liveability across Australia. Our new and improved portal reflects the ongoing contribution of our research partners, without whom, our expanded work would not be possible.
Emeritus Professor Barbara Norman is our esteemed guest speaker at the launch and Chair of the National Urban Policy Forum. Professor Norman is a global expert in sustainable cities and regions, smart infrastructure, coastal planning, climate change adaptation and urban governance. Professor Norman will present the Australian Government’s Draft National Urban Policy that has recently been open for public consultation with goals and objectives that support urban areas to be liveable, equitable, productive, sustainable and resilient.
Join us for an informative, interactive session and learn more about how the AUO Map 2.0 can serve you even better!
Speakers:
Emeritus Professor Barbara Norman, University of Canberra, Chair National Urban Policy Forum
Brigid Papaix, Partnerships Manager & Knowledge Broker Australian Urban Observatory, RMIT University
Professor Melanie Davern, Director Australian Urban Observatory, RMIT University
This event will be held online via Microsoft Teams. An online access link will be emailed on the day prior to the event. Registrations will close on the 9th of September at 5:00pm. Click here to register.
We are thrilled to share a sneak peek of the enhancements that are coming to the Australian Urban Observatory Map, designed to elevate your user experience and provide even deeper insights into the liveability of Australian cities.
Faster Navigation
We’ve made it easier to get the liveability data you need with upgrades to increase the map speed and adding new navigation features.
You can search by address to quickly find a specific location or simply drag and zoom the map to explore different areas.
Neighbourhood Walking Distance
One of the exciting new features is the Walking Distance tool.
This feature utilises the road network to calculate the walkability of a neighbourhood. By selecting a walking time (ranging from 10 to 60 minutes) and centre point on the map, you can visualise the area you can cover on foot within that time frame.
Additionally, you can access data on the population within that walking range, including male and female populations and the average household size.
Redesigned Scorecard
The liveability Scorecard has been redesigned to provide a more intuitive way to understand how an area is performing relative to the rest of the country across the nine key domains of liveability. You can also download easy to interpret PDFs, making them ideal for inclusion in reports and submissions.
Thanks to our Partners
These upgrades are the result of close collaboration with our paid partners. Our partners play a huge part in shaping the AUO portal and a faster, more responsive, and easier to use portal ensures that they can access the data they need to enhance liveability across our cities.
You can join this collaboration and access all the features and data available to our partners.
Create an account to access the free version of the AUO portal, empowering you to make informed decisions for our cities’ future, and be the first to see the enhanced AUO portal when it launches.
Meet our Newest Indicators!
With support from the Victorian Higher Education Investment Funding the Australian Urban Observatory (AUO) is excited to launch a new national resource of 24 new Specialist Housing Indicators that address critical housing issues across LGAs, suburbs and neighbourhoods of Australian cities.
The Specialist Housing Indicators have been developed to support our users with:
– directly addressing the current and critical housing issues of relevance to public policy and decision-making across Australia,
– piloting and demonstrating the value of small area spatial analysis, measurement and mapping of critical housing issues to help inform service planning, advocacy and policy intervention and
– Identifying areas of inequity with new specialist housing indicators available at the smallest level of geography available, dependent on data access and availability.
New specialist housing indicators include: housing precarity and gentrification, homelessness service access, VAMPIRE (Vulnerability Assessment for Mortgage, Petroleum, Inflation Risks and Expenditure, Key Workers, housing ownership and costs, social and public housing, and affordable rentals. Full details about all of the indicators and how they have been calculated can be found here.
How to Access the Indicators
The AUO maps 70+ indicators of liveability across Australia’s 21 largest cities. We map to three three levels of detail: Local Government Areas, Suburbs and Neighbourhoods for two time periods, 2018 and 2021. Understanding liveability indicators at this granular level enables partners to see where the inequities are in their community and supports planning and policymaking for community health and wellbeing.
All new Specialist Housing Indicators are FREE to access in the AUO. Indicators for our overall Liveability and Social Infrastructure domains are also available for FREE to all levels of detail.
Suburb and Neighbourhood levels of details for all other domains: Walkability, Transport, Food, Alcohol, Public Open Space, Employment and Housing are available via a paid partnership with the Australian Urban Observatory.
To learn more about liveability of Australian cities and a paid partnership with the Australian Urban Observatory, contact us here.
In conjunction with the Geography Teachers Association of Victoria we have developed some excellent new education resources to support understanding of liveability, urban connections, and geographies of wellbeing for Australian secondary school students.
These resources align with three specific units in the Victorian Geography Curriculum enabling students to explore:
Year 7: Place and Liveability
Factors that influence the decisions people make about where to live and their perceptions of the liveability of places, influence of accessibility to services and facilities; and environmental quality, on the liveability of places, environmental, economic and social measures used to evaluate places for their liveability, comparing two different places, influence of social connectedness and community identity on the liveability of places, strategies used to enhance the liveability of places, especially for young people.
Year 9: Geography of Interconnections
Perceptions people have of place, and how this influences their connections to different places, ways in which transportation technologies are used to connect people to services, information and people in other places and the effects of people’s travel, recreational, cultural or leisure choices on places, and the implications for the future of these places
Year 10: Geography of Human Wellbeing
Reasons and consequences for spatial variations in human wellbeing on a regional scale on a local scale in Australia, different ways of measuring and mapping human wellbeing and development, and how these can be applied to measure differences between places, role of initiatives by international and national government and non-government organisations to improve human wellbeing in Australia
We are excited to share these resources, alongside a supporting Teacher Resource, with teachers and students across Australia. They will be available through the AUO (download here) and GTAV websites.
We are excited to share our new Demographic Indicators to enable better understanding of equity of access to liveable places in your local community. These Demographic Indicators have been mapped with both 2016 and 2021 Census data providing alignment with our 2018 and 2021 Liveability Indicators.
In this first release, we have 115 Demographic Indicators mapped to all three levels of detail – LGAs, Suburbs and Neighbourhoods – including mapping of incidence of disease data which has been collected by the ABS Census for the first time in 2021.
The 115 new indicators include: Age and gender (24), Housing type (7), Diversity (6), SEIFA-IRSD (2), Labour force status (3), Income (5), Housing costs (15), Employment sector (5), Education (2) and Health (46).
You can download our most up to date list of AUO Cities and Indicators here.
National Treasure Magda Szubanski has taken a deep dive into chronic disease in Australia and what we can do to reduce its impact.
And where did she start?
By talking to our director, Associate Professor Melanie Davern, and learning about how where you live has a big impact on your health.
The RMIT AUO maps lived environment social determinants of health for Australia’s largest 21 cities. These social determinants can predict up to 50% of your health outcomes longterm.
And how can understanding these social determinants in your community help improve health and wellbeing for all? Magda says it so perfectly –
“If you have this information then you know what are the things that need to change in order to build the infrastructure so that people can have a healthier life!”
You can catch all three episodes on ABC iView here.
We’ve created a new video tutorial to help you understand the AUO, its maps, score card and functionality.
Check it our here on our website here.
There are chapter headings in the progress bar to enable quick access relevant sections:
▪︎ Selecting your area and indicator
▪︎ Reading the Score card
▪︎ Indicator information (green tab)
▪︎ Score card tab (pink tab)
▪︎ ABS indicators (yellow tab)
▪︎ Layers selection (blue tab)
▪︎ Data downloads (orange tab)
▪︎ Double maps for comparison
▪︎ Book a demo
Our Director, Associate Professor Melanie Davern and Research Impact and Partnerships Manager Katherine Riggall Murray recently penned an article for the Planning Institute of Australia‘s Planning News magazine on using the AUO’s new 20 Minute Neighbourhood Scorecard to measure local liveability.
???? The PIA have kindly made it available for us to share.
Learn more about how 20 Minute Neighbourhood create more vibrant, healthy and sustainable communities and how you can use the AUO to support better understanding of local strengths and weaknesses as you plan for investment in liveability.
We are excited to share that our RMIT Centre for Urban Research team members Dr Lucy Gunn, Dr Alan Both, Dr Belen Zapata Diomedi, and RMIT AUO Director Dr Melanie Davern has been awarded a new strategic grant from The Australian Prevention Partnership Centre.
This new project will scale up our existing THAT Melbourne tool by developing a new Transport Health Assessment Tool for Brisbane (THAT-Brisbane).
The tool will evaluate the benefits of replacing short car trips with active transport for seven chronic diseases (ischaemic heart disease, stroke, diabetes type II, lung and colon cancers, and breast and uterine cancers in women).
You can see THAT Melbourne in action on the AUO website here.
And learn more about TAPPC’s strategic grants program to progress applied research into the prevention of chronic disease here.
Our RMIT Centre for Urban Research colleagues Nicola Willand and Trivess Moore respond to this important question in this weeks Conversation.
The required energy-efficiency rating of new housing in Australia will increase from 6 to 7 stars from October next year. Some claim this will greatly increase housing costs. But is this true?
Costs for new home owners are the sum of three things:
- capital costs to build the home
- costs to heat, cool and live in the home
- mortgage costs.
The focus has been on the upfront capital costs of new homes – over a million are expected to be built over the next three years. The costs of living in the home and impacts on mortgage payments are neglected. Given the move to 7 stars will cut energy use for heating and cooling by about 24%, the cost savings will outweigh any increase in mortgage repayments in many circumstances.
And there are simple ways to achieve a 7-star rating on a budget, as they explain.
Will 7-star housing really cost more? It depends, but you can keep costs down in a few simple ways