Indicator Rationale
Liveable neighbourhoods have a range of essential shops and services within easy walking distance. Our definition of essential ‘daily living destinations’ includes three types of destinations:
Supermarkets (source of fresh, healthy food)
Public transport stops (allow people to get to jobs, schools and other important places without relying on cars)
Convenience (including convenience stores, newsagents and petrol stations- places where people can get basics like milk and a newspaper)
Having more of these daily living destinations close by allows people to meet their daily needs locally. Rather than driving, local and convenient facilities encourage walking or cycling which reduce the each individual’s risk of chronic diseases.
Relevant Sustainable Development Goals
Measures
Average number of daily living destination types present within 1600m
Methodology
To measure access to services of daily living, point data representing the location of supermarkets, public transport stops and convenience stores were used with a pedestrian road network and sample points.
The index of access to services of daily living was created using a pedestrian road network, sample points and three destination types:
Supermarkets
Public transport stops
Convenience stores
The location of supermarkets and greengrocers was derived from OpenStreetMap and from five major supermarket chain websites; Aldi, Coles, Foodworks, IGA and Woolworths.
Three destination types were combined to create a ‘convenience store’ category using data derived from OpenStreetMap; convenience stores, newsagents and petrol stations.
Pedestrian road network distances were calculated from each sample point to each type of daily living destination class and binary indicators were created to record the presence (=1) or absence (=0) of each destination type. A daily living index was created by summing the 3 binary indicators for each participant. Consequently, a maximum score of 3 represented the highest index of daily living with all types present.