You are planning for growth. But will it be built? Your questions, answered
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One country, many priorities: your 204 questions, answered
Community views
Jacquie Norton
Senior Social Researcher
The questions we were asked most
- We were asked 204 questions at Living in Australia 2026. Our national briefing on 1 September 2026 drew questions from local government, utilities, education, health and planning. They group into 12 themes, answered below by the researchers who ran the study.
- Safety and belonging drew the most, 21 of the 204. These are the two things where local conditions matter most, so they vary more between individual communities than almost anything else we measure, and a national benchmark will not tell you your own position.
- Regional and rural service gaps came a close second, with 20. Public transport, shops, health services and education fall away consistently the further you get from a capital city, and become more important to residents as they get harder to reach.
- Another 20 asked how to actually use the data, in a strategy, a business case or a grant application. The answer is prioritisation: take the attributes residents rank highest on importance, find where their experience is weakest, and act on that gap.
- The finding people wanted most to discuss was that only 4% feel heard. Just 4% of residents felt their community's views were very well considered in local decision-making. Those who do feel heard rate their area 71.0 out of 100, against 49.9 among those who feel not considered at all.
- Forty-six of the 175 registration questions named no specific topic at all. People wrote 'everything', 'just the data', or 'just keen to hear the findings'.
Six hundred and fifteen people registered for Living in Australia 2026, and 204 of them asked us something. Grouped into themes, the same 12 questions came up again and again.
This article is the 12 questions that came up most often, and our answers to them. For the findings themselves, the full presentation, slides and resources are available to watch on demand.
Take safety, which drew more questions than any other topic. Ask residents what would make their area safer and a metropolitan respondent talks about lighting, CCTV, graffiti and dumped rubbish. In a rural service town, safety turns up in the same breath as the bank and the bus: one more thing being lost. Same survey question, two different problems, two different responses.
That is the shape of nearly every answer below. Where the national number travels, we say so. Where it does not, we say what changes it, and what you would have to measure locally to find out. One table is worth having in front of you first, because most of the answers refer back to it.
What Australians value most, and how their local area rates on it
| Attribute | Share naming it in their top five | Experience of it locally, 0-10 |
|---|---|---|
| Feeling safe | 69% | 6.4 |
| Access to the natural environment | 56% | 7.6 |
| Affordable decent housing | 49% | 4.6 |
| Reliable and efficient public transport | 47% | 5.3 |
| High quality health services | 43% | 6.3 |
Share of residents nominating each attribute in their top five of 16, against the mean rating of their local area on it. Nature is valued highly and delivered well. Housing is valued nearly as highly and rated worst of anything we measure. Source: Living in Australia 2026, n=5,325.
Where these questions came from
These are audience questions from Living in Australia 2026, a free national briefing we presented on Tuesday 1 September 2026.
The session was open to anyone. Most people who came work in local government, alongside others from utilities, education, health, emergency services, state agencies, consultancies and property.
The answers below are written mainly for that local government audience: the people putting together a community strategic plan, a corporate or integrated plan, a business case or a grant application, who need defensible evidence of what residents value and where their needs are not being met. That is what Community Views measures, and most of the answers show how that evidence gets used in practice. If you work outside local government, the same logic applies wherever you need to understand community sentiment for a place.
Most of the questions were submitted at registration, when we asked people what they wanted to learn more about. The rest came from the live session and the follow-up survey. Every question is quoted as it was submitted, with names and organisations removed and job titles kept, so you can see who was asking.
The 12 questions, and the short answers
What makes people feel safe and like they belong, and can a council do anything about it?
21 questions. We asked people what they wanted to learn more about. In their words:
Community Safety Officer, metropolitan Melbourne council
'Community sentiment around safety, feeling and being safe. Do community feel connected, what makes them feel connected. The importance of creating resilience within a community.'
Engagement and Advocacy Officer, coastal regional NSW council
'How do communities develop their distinctive character? What makes some communities fiercely protective of THEIR character? What factors are needed to develop and maintain outstandingly special communities?'
Community Projects and Partnerships Officer, western Sydney council
'Increase in rough sleepers in Southwest Sydney. Lack of housing. Increase in domestic and family violence amongst the community. Social cohesion.'
Grant Coordinator, regional NSW council
'Values and lived experiences. This thing called "Australian Values" is touted around. What are they?'
Safety and belonging are the two places where local conditions matter most. Much of liveability is shaped by whether somewhere is metropolitan, regional or rural, and you can reason your way to the answer from the type of place. Safety and belonging do not work like that. They vary substantially between individual communities, so the only way to know your own position is to measure it.
Held against all 16 measures, feeling safe and a sense of belonging share their strongest drivers: how prosperous the local area feels, access to nature and green space, a sense of community, and social cohesion.
Perceived local prosperity is by far the biggest contributor to feeling safe, and it is not about employment statistics. It is about whether a place looks like it is doing well.
How safe people feel, by how they rate their local economy
| How residents rate their local economy | Residents | How safe they feel, 0-10 |
|---|---|---|
| Low (0-3) | 964 | 4.2 |
| Moderate (4-6) | 3,172 | 6.1 |
| High (7-10) | 2,126 | 7.7 |
A 3.5 point spread on the single most important attribute in the study. Source: Living in Australia 2026, n=5,325.
That is why residents raising safety in their own words talk about lighting, maintenance, graffiti and neglected sites rather than policing. For belonging, the two strongest contributors by a clear margin are social cohesion and opportunity for all. People feel they belong somewhere that feels fair and accepting.
A strong sense of community is the 6th most important attribute to Australians and the 4th most positively experienced. The spread underneath that is wide. Regional residents both value it more (44% against 32%) and experience it more strongly (6.9 against 6.2). Outer suburbs record the lowest rating in the country.
When residents describe what they value, they talk about friendly neighbours, multicultural gatherings, local festivals, and support for the halls, schools, libraries and sporting clubs where people run into each other. The phrase that recurs is that 'people look out for one another'.
'Safety' means something different in each kind of place
We analysed 638 open-text responses that raised safety or crime, in answer to the question of what could be done to improve quality of life locally. Sorted by place type, they are not describing the same problem, and they do not call for the same response.
What residents mean when they raise safety
| Place type | What residents raise |
|---|---|
| Metropolitan | Physical and mostly council-controlled: lighting in parks and streets, CCTV, cleaning up graffiti, dumped rubbish and abandoned trolleys. Lighting and surveillance language appears at four times the rural rate. |
| Peri-urban and lifestyle | Footpaths, road edges, derelict buildings and development pressure. The lowest salience of the four groups, and framed as a warning sign rather than a current crisis. |
| Regional cities | Youth and antisocial behaviour language runs well above other groups. Tied to how the town is seen from outside. Clusters with homelessness and mental health. |
| Rural and remote | Policing language is highest here, but as presence rather than enforcement. Listed alongside the bank, the bus and the hospital: safety as one more thing being lost. |
Themes from 638 open-text responses raising safety or crime, from the question: what could be done to improve the quality of life for people in your local area? Source: Living in Australia 2026.
Four different responses follow from that. Lighting and maintenance in the first. An early warning to act on in the second. A youth and mental health response in the third. And in the fourth, a question about service withdrawal that a council cannot answer on its own.
What that means for a council
An inner Melbourne council found a substantial liveability gap between two of its suburbs, with residents in one reporting poorer experiences of safety and social cohesion. Their comments pointed to highly visible local conditions: cleanliness, lighting, anti-social behaviour and the condition of public spaces. That council's work to revitalise those areas brings together public-realm improvements, cleanliness, activation, safety and business confidence, which shows how action on the condition and vitality of a place can address several of the foundations of feeling safe at once.
Four practical levers for a council: maintaining the visible condition and upkeep of public space; green space and tree canopy; sport, recreation and the places that host informal contact, which is the single strongest driver of social wellbeing nationally; and inclusion work, because fairness is what belonging rests on.
Councils should treat safety and belonging as one connected agenda, resource maintenance and green space as social infrastructure rather than amenity, and target inclusion effort at the groups furthest behind rather than spreading it evenly.
On resilience, which several people raised: it is not simply the ability to recover from a major event such as a bushfire, flood or economic shock. It is also the underlying capacity of a community to adapt to ongoing change and support one another when challenges arise. Communities with strong social networks, trust, participation, access to services and inclusive places may be better equipped to share information, mobilise resources and support vulnerable residents during periods of disruption. A robust survey of your community can therefore help you understand some of the social foundations of resilience, and tracking those measures over time shows whether they are strengthening or becoming more vulnerable.
What is different about regional and rural Australia, and what are those communities going without?
20 questions, and the ones with the most specific operational asks. Note how often the subject is services rather than amenity.
CEO, South Australian regional development body
'Regional differences in experience of quality of life. The impact of work on liveability. The importance of underlying determinants of health (eg access to housing) on people's experiences of a place.'
Webinar attendee
'Is there any difference between the response value for access to and provision of education (schools, Higher Ed, VET and adult and community education) services between metro, regional, rural and remote locations?'
Co-convenor, national rural and remote community legal network
'The NSW Parliament is currently undertaking a review into "Government service delivery standards in regional NSW". I wonder if "service delivery standards" is a useful approach, whether it's under-developed and a potential area for increased focus?'
Service Integration Facilitator, regional Queensland community services
'Particularly on rural/remote views/access to services etc and how that compares to larger regions.'
The further you move from a capital city, the experience of essential services changes dramatically. Four things fall away particularly consistently: public transport, shops and things to do, health services, and education. These are among the most geographically predictable results in the study, which suggests that where you live, the size of your community and its distance from major centres have a significant influence on what you can access.
And as access declines, these services become more important. Health is the clearest example. Around one-third of inner-city residents nominate health services as one of the most important things about where they live, compared with almost six in 10 residents of small country towns. When residents are asked what they want decision-makers to advocate for, the divide becomes even larger: health is nominated by just over a third of inner-metro residents, rising to almost three-quarters in rural service towns. It is one of the clearest geographic differences in the entire study.
The same pattern extends to other essential services. Aged care, emergency services and education all become substantially greater priorities outside the major cities. Even digital inclusion, a relatively low priority nationally, doubles in importance in small country towns. These are not simply different preferences. They reflect the things that become more consequential when they are harder to access.
Rockhampton shows what this looks like locally. Community Views found a community with many of the strengths associated with regional living: residents reported relatively positive experiences of access to nature, sport and recreation, and education. But public transport and health services were among the areas where community need was less well met. It is a useful example of the regional trade-off, where a place can offer many of the ingredients of a good lifestyle while residents still experience gaps in services that people in metropolitan areas take for granted.
Regional Australia trades service access for space, nature and community
As some services become less accessible, other aspects of liveability become stronger. Regional residents report much better experiences of access to nature and considerably less congestion than people living in metropolitan areas. Small country towns also record the strongest sense of community of any settlement type in Australia.
Nature also appears to play a different role outside the cities. In metropolitan Australia, sport and recreation facilities are strongly associated with people's wellbeing. In regional Australia, access to nature becomes much more important to physical health, because the landscape itself provides opportunities for activity, recreation, restoration and connection. Rivers, bushland, beaches, trails and open space are not simply environmental or recreational amenities in regional communities. They can function as part of the health and wellbeing infrastructure of a place, which gives protecting them a social and health value as well as an environmental one.
People moving out of the cities are looking for exactly that. Our survey does not ask people why they moved, but it does let us compare what recent arrivals in regional Australia value and experience against metro residents. Regional newcomers rate lack of road congestion at 6.8 against 4.7 in metro areas, sense of community at 7.0 against 6.1, and access to nature at 8.2 against 7.3. Affordability is real but small by comparison, 5.0 against 4.6, and when we ask people unprompted what they value most about their area, only 1% mention cost at all, against 35% who talk about nature, 28% about community and 21% about peace and space.
What they give up is substantial and concentrated: public transport 3.9 against 6.4, shopping and dining 5.1 against 6.5, health services 5.7 against 6.8, and education 5.7 against 6.6. That last group is the risk worth watching, because these movers arrive already weighting health services more heavily than metro residents, 49% naming it a top-five priority against 37%, while rating their actual experienced access more than a point lower.
Four kinds of regional Australia, not one
Several of you asked whether regions differ from each other rather than just from the cities. They do, and it is the role and function of the place that separates them. A lifestyle destination does not behave like a service town.
Four regional place types, four different pressures
| Place type | Strengths | Under pressure on |
|---|---|---|
| Peri-urban and regional fringe (Blue Mountains, Surf Coast, Lockyer Valley, Gingin, Huon Valley. n=252) | Strong natural amenity, high feelings of safety, community connection, and the chance to manage growth around environmental and rural character. | Access to services and employment, transport limitations, growth pressure, bushfire and other natural hazards. |
| Major regional cities (Geelong, Newcastle, Sunshine Coast. n=698) | Strong regional service role. Health, education and employment infrastructure, and capacity to attract people, skills and investment. | Housing affordability, community safety, and keeping services and infrastructure aligned with growth. |
| Regional cities (Dubbo, Horsham, Gladstone, Geraldton, Whyalla. n=587) | Important regional service hubs. Valued healthcare and employment opportunities, and potential to strengthen local jobs, amenity and reasons to stay. | Specialist service access, workforce attraction and retention, transport connections. |
| Regional lifestyle (Byron, Noosa, Livingstone, Cassowary Coast. n=402) | Highly valued natural environment and lifestyle, strong place appeal, tourism and natural assets that can support sustainable local economies. | Housing affordability, growth pressure, environmental protection, climate resilience. |
Source: Living in Australia 2026.
Rural and remote Australia splits again. Rural service areas such as Campaspe and Mid-Western hold established service towns supporting a wider catchment, and their pressure is on maintaining healthcare, aged care and connectivity for an ageing population. Agricultural rural areas such as Buloke, Hay, Gwydir and Barunga West have productive economies and strong local knowledge, against distance and fuel costs, transport deficits and workforce retention. Remote communities such as East Arnhem, East Pilbara and Central Desert record a very strong sense of community and hold local and First Nations knowledge and leadership, against equitable access to health, housing, education, safety and reliable all-weather roads. Our remote sample is 82 residents, which is too small to draw firm conclusions from.
The implication for decision-makers is not that regional communities need to become more like cities. It is to protect the things that make regional places work, nature, space and community connection, while addressing the essential-service gaps that geography creates. For councils advocating for investment, Community Views can help distinguish between what makes a place uniquely strong and what residents should not have to go without simply because of where they live.
How do we use this in a strategy, a business case or a grant application?
20 questions, almost all from local government, and almost all about the next step rather than the findings. Several people named the exact document they were writing.
Manager Community Outcomes, inner-western Melbourne council
'How the liveability of an inner west municipality in Victoria compares across the country and how we can use this information to strengthen grant applications etc.'
Corporate Planning and Performance Lead, regional NSW city council
'Meaningful data to use for our next Community Strategic Plan to identify the community's priorities.'
Principal Economic Development Advisor, metropolitan Adelaide council
'I've started a new role in a different Council. I'm planning our next Economic Prosperity Plan and I'm looking to unpack place based evidence in an area very different to my previous one.'
Statutory Planner, Tasmanian council
'How to use the data practically, translating the survey findings into inputs for strategic land use or community plans.'
The most common use is prioritisation. You take the attributes residents rank highest in importance, look at where their experience is weakest, and that gap tells you where action is most likely to improve lives.
Four questions do most of the work: what matters most here, where are residents' needs being met, where are the biggest gaps, and how does this place compare with similar communities? Tracking those over time helps distinguish one-off concerns from sustained trends, and shows whether priorities are changing and outcomes improving.
Here is what that gap looks like in practice. Three councils, three different attributes, and in each case a rank on importance sitting a long way from the rank on experience. Ranks are out of the 16 liveability attributes measured.
Three councils, three gaps between what residents rank highly and what they get
| Council | Attribute | Rank on importance | Rank on experience | Local context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| City of Ipswich | A lack of road congestion | 4th of 16 | 16th of 16 | n=1,320 residents. 260,000 more people expected by 2046. |
| Clarence Valley Council | High quality health services | 3rd of 16 | 13th of 16 | n=526 residents. Median age 49, with large growth to 2046 in the 85+ group. |
| City of Canning | Social cohesion | 5th of 16 | 8th of 16 | n=2,882 community members. 51% of residents born overseas. |
See what data already exists for your community
Your own area
Search your place to find which Informed Decisions tools your council already subscribes to, including Community Views.
Source: commissioned Community Views projects.
For a strategy, that means councils like Ipswich, Clarence Valley and Northern Beaches have embedded specific measures into their corporate, health and wellbeing, Disability Inclusion Action Plans, environmental and community plans as indicators of progress, so they can report on outcomes residents recognise rather than only on outputs delivered. By running the survey year on year, organisations can track their results against their benchmark to measure progress.
The same gap analysis underpins a business case or a grant application. It gives you the quantified, evidenced 'why here, why now' that funding bodies and decision-makers look for, backed by resident voice rather than assumption.
And this is not just for councils. The survey asks what residents value, how they experience their local area, and what they want local decision-makers to focus on, not council specifically, so it can be run for a range of organisations and applied to different settings. When 66% of peri-urban residents nominate transport infrastructure, or 72% of rural service area residents nominate health services, that is a signal directed at whoever holds the lever, including state agencies, health services and infrastructure bodies.
Making the funding case for infrastructure
People experience liveability at a local level. Their quality of life is shaped by their ability to access the things they need every day, and many of those outcomes are directly enabled or influenced by local infrastructure.
Measuring both what residents value and how they currently experience their local area identifies where there is a gap between the importance of an aspect of liveability and how well that need is currently being met. Data may show that access to health services is highly valued but poorly experienced in a growing regional community, that congestion and transport access are increasingly affecting liveability in an outer-growth area, that access to parks and natural environments matters more as an area becomes more densely populated, or that community facilities and walking infrastructure become more important as a population ages.
This can strengthen the justification for infrastructure funding by adding the community need and outcomes case to traditional evidence such as population forecasts, asset capacity and economic analysis. Rather than simply demonstrating that an area needs a new or upgraded asset, the data can help explain why it matters to the community, which liveability outcomes it supports, how significant the need is, and how that need compares with other priorities. Over time, repeated measurement can also demonstrate whether infrastructure investment is translating into better community outcomes, moving the conversation from 'what infrastructure did we deliver?' to 'what difference did that infrastructure make to people's experience of their local area?'
The national average is not our community. How do we find ours in it?
14 questions. Several people were trying to work out which comparison is the right one for them.
Principal Advisor (Social), Victorian state infrastructure body
'I would be interested to learn more about how liveability changes in different places (established inner suburb, metropolitan growth areas, regional cities, smaller regional towns, rural areas) and how these trends differ between states.'
School Social Worker, Tasmania
'Tasmania is referred to as a regional state, but this can simplify understanding of relative perspective (e.g. living in an urban city like Hobart, but being regional at the same time). How do broader regional and rural distinctions on a national basis apply to Tasmania?'
Data Scientist, Victorian public sector body
'The limitations of national averages and how to dig deeper effectively in local communities. LGAs versus postcodes.'
City Data Analyst, inner-metropolitan Victorian council
'City-specific insights, like how does Melbourne perform compared to other capital cities? How does the inner metro area compare to outer suburbs, ect.'
A national average is a benchmark, not a plan. Australia scores 60.6 on the Overall Liveability Index in 2026, and almost nobody lives in that number.
Overall Liveability Index by place type, 2026
| Place type | Residents | Liveability Index, 0-100 |
|---|---|---|
| Australia | 5,325 | 60.6 |
| Established inner metro | 844 | 64.1 |
| Established middle metro | 976 | 63.5 |
| Metropolitan outer growth | 846 | 57.4 |
| Peri-urban and regional fringe | 252 | 59.8 |
| Major regional cities | 698 | 59.3 |
| Regional cities | 587 | 59.4 |
| Regional lifestyle | 402 | 60.0 |
| Rural service areas | 342 | 57.3 |
| Agricultural rural | 296 | 57.3 |
| Remote | 82 | 59.3 |
Established inner metro records the highest result at 64.1. Metropolitan outer growth, rural service areas and agricultural rural are effectively tied at the bottom on 57.4 and 57.3. Remote is based on n=82 and should be treated with caution. Source: Living in Australia 2026.
Underneath that, place-based evidence pays off unevenly across the 16 attributes, and knowing which is which will save you money. For transport and education a council can largely reason from what kind of place it is. But for housing affordability, safety, nature and culture the local result is genuinely its own. Place type explains almost none of the variation, so a benchmark or a peer comparison will mislead you, and only measuring your own community will do.
Choose your benchmark deliberately for each attribute. Job prospects and education are strongly shaped by place, so an outer metropolitan council should compare itself to Metropolitan Australia rather than to its state, since a state average blending a capital city with regional areas will distort its position.
People from 426 distinct local government areas took part in this year's study, but it is built for national, regional and place-type analysis, not for individual council results. The local area pages on the Living in Australia platform let you look at results by different cities and regions across Australia, for example Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Central Victoria, South East Queensland or Regional Western Australia. On those pages you will find all the results for that area compared to the national averages, along with the definitions of the LGAs included.
To see what already exists for your area, search your place on id.com.au/places and you will find which tools your council subscribes to, including Community Views. For more granular insight into your own community, Community Views is a commissioned research project. We build and deliver custom samples, sized to get robust results down to suburb or local area level. There is a set of core questions so places can benchmark against other places, plus custom questions on whatever is important locally, tailored to a specific strategy, plan, policy or focus area. The survey can be timed to align with your planning schedule.
What is the housing story underneath liveability?
14 questions, arriving from three directions: affordability as a lived pressure, renting as an under-served experience, and housing typology as a planning lever.
Manager Sports and Community Planning, south-east Queensland growth council
'Very interested in the renters experiences, is this in the data as well? Also does this change depending upon age and location of the renters?'
Urban Planner, metropolitan Western Australian council
'Housing affordability within Perth's central neighbourhoods: Central Perth, West Perth, East Perth, South Perth, Leederville, Crawley, Nedlands. What are the differences and what contributes to these differences? How can planning policy influence market sale price?'
Retired architect, NSW
'The largest family cohort now is a single older woman. Most new developments, particularly in affluent areas don't cater for this demographic because it is less profitable. Council LEPs and DCPs can be amended so that bonus FSR can apply to the provision of small bachelor or one bed room units.'
Head of Business, national not-for-profit
'Changing demographics in suburbs as prices rise and families with young children are pushed out, leaving a mainly older population. What needs to change to draw the families back?'
We do not measure 'housing' in Community Views. We measure access to affordable, decent housing, deliberately, because it is not just the dwelling, it is the value and quality of it, and both are anchored to life stage. Affordable means you can financially access the housing your stage of life requires. Decent means the dwelling meets what that stage requires.
The service gives you two things together: how important housing is to your community, and how well residents feel it is delivered locally. Across most councils, housing ranks among the highest on importance and the lowest on experience. That gap is the finding, and it is the largest and most consistent one we see anywhere in the data. It is the clearest signal of unmet need.
It is also the biggest single lever available. A one-point improvement in how residents experience affordable decent housing would lift the Overall Liveability Index by a full point, with the greatest benefits going to renters and younger residents.
That is why the story underneath liveability is a tenure story. Roughly a third of Australians own outright, a third are paying a mortgage, a third rent. Outright owners have been the main beneficiaries of housing as an asset class. Mortgage holders have benefited on a choppier ride. Renters wear the cost. Tenure is a life stage, not an identity, and most people move through all three.
So when ownership tracks so strongly with how people rate their area, their financial circumstances and their mental health, we are not looking at a fixed group. We are looking at a stage of life that has become materially harder, and materially longer.
Because we ask home ownership, dwelling type, household composition and length of time in the area, that gap can be opened up: renters against owners, younger residents against older, newcomers against long-term. That tells you where housing is underperforming, for whom, and by how much, which is what turns a national problem into a local decision. It supports advocacy to other levels of government, informs housing strategy and planning responses, targets intervention at the groups most affected, and, tracked over time, tests whether any of it worked.
What residents ask for is affordable homes, greater housing choice and supply, well-designed neighbourhoods, and homes close to jobs, services and transport.
Housing is often admired as a national problem. I would rather put it the other way around. It is the single biggest opportunity we have to lift quality of life for Australians.
Is liveability getting better or worse, and for whom?
13 questions. Year four of the study, and people want the trend line.
Senior Insights Analyst, south-east Queensland water utility
'Liveability trends, across Australia and in our region (Noosa, Sunshine Coast, Moreton Bay). Is it getting better, worse, staying the same? And what are the key drivers? Is it getting better for some and worse for others?'
Brand Project Manager, Tasmanian state brand agency
'Which liveability factors contribute to people making the decision to actually move, as opposed to just thinking about moving?'
Strategic Planner, Tasmanian council
'What are the top trends, and what does it mean for the provision of social infrastructure. What has changed, and where do regional urban centers sit?'
Managing Director, consultancy
'Observed shifts in demographic trends and community insights around (i) values and (ii) expectations (met and unmet) and future hopes.'
Overall liveability in Australia has gone back over the past four years. The Overall Liveability Index sat at 62.6 in 2023, edged up to 63.4 in 2024, then fell sharply to 59.5 in 2025 before recovering slightly to 60.6 in 2026. Net of that movement, we are two points below where we started. The recovery in the most recent wave is real but partial.
Overall Liveability Index, Australia
| Year | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall Liveability Index | 62.6 | 63.4 | 59.5 | 60.6 |
A resident-centred outcome measure that quantifies quality of life at a point in time, scored 0 to 100. It tracks how Australians rate their local area's liveability and how those ratings change over time. Source: Living in Australia 2026, n=5,325.
The decline is principally driven by two dynamics, both operating on attributes that sit in the top five for importance.
Feeling safe has become more important and less delivered
It has always been the single most important contributor to somewhere being a good place to live, and its importance has risen significantly, from 63% of residents nominating it in 2023 to 69% in 2026. Over the same period, local experience of safety has declined significantly, from 6.7 to 6.4. Those two movements compound each other. As people feel less safe where they live, the foundational thing they already valued most becomes more important still, so the shortfall carries more weight in how they judge their local area. The result is less liveable communities.
Housing shows the widest gap in the study
Importance has risen from 46% to 49%, a smaller but still significant shift, and one that peaked higher again at 56% in 2025 before easing. Local experience has declined significantly from 4.9 to 4.6, the lowest experience score of any attribute we measure, by a clear margin. The same dynamic applies: rising importance against falling experience, on a top-five attribute.
Those two are not isolated. Compared with 2023, residents nationally are reporting less positive local experiences on 10 of the 16 attributes in the survey. The declines cluster around movement, opportunity and the daily texture of a place: making your way to and from services with relative ease, road congestion, job prospects, opportunity for all, a prosperous economy. Population growth sits underneath much of this as context, because more people using the same infrastructure changes the experience of a place well before it changes the place itself.
Where the national result splits
The national average hides two widening divides. The first is generational: older Australians are generally reporting better local experiences on the things they value most, while younger Australians report poorer experiences on theirs. The distance between those two lived realities is expanding.
The second is geographic: metropolitan residents generally report better local experiences on the things that matter to them, while regional and rural residents report worse. The standout there is health services. Regional and rural Australians report significantly poorer local experiences of high-quality health services at the same time as their demand for those services is rising. That single gap is doing more than any other to hold back liveability outside the metros.
The national economic picture is worth adding as backdrop, because it colours everything above. People are feeling the pinch now and expecting it to continue. The share of Australians who are sometimes, often or always late meeting their financial commitments has risen from 30% in 2023 to 40% in 2026. And expectations have pulled apart decisively: in 2023, 25% thought their personal financial circumstances would worsen over the next 12 months against 23% who thought they would improve, roughly balanced. By 2026, 38% expect to be worse off and only 17% expect to be better off. We are squarely in the cost of living crisis, and residents are reading their local area through it.
All of which is the Australian picture. National movement of this kind is the backdrop against which individual councils should read their own results, not a substitute for them. The local pattern is frequently quite different, and knowing which of these dynamics is running in your LGA and which is not is the point of measuring it locally.
How was this done, and can we trust it for our community?
11 questions, mostly from people who are going to put these numbers in front of a council or a board.
Webinar attendee
'Are you able to share your sampling strategy and how representative the survey may be of regional, Aboriginal and diverse experiences across Australia? Are we able to access disaggregated data?'
Webinar attendee, following up
'Is it a phone survey? Because representation can be skewed to those who actually answer their phones to unknown numbers.'
Community volunteer
'How are areas counted? Only 5,000 Australians study, out of 27+ million; please explain the relevance.'
Community Capability Officer, state emergency service
'Methodology of ten place typologies. Only 4% of Australians feel their community's views are very well considered in local decision-making, what grain the data was collected and what questions were asked to measure this.'
Not a phone survey. The Living in Australia survey was collected from 9 to 28 April 2026 using our proven social media advertising approach. Social media advertising is an emerging social research methodology, and Informed Decisions leads the way in using and proving its viability. It is our main data collection method when recruiting within a local government area, because it is the best available way to generate large, diverse samples of residents across small geographic areas. It lets us target a high volume of residents in a local area cost-effectively. More than 80% of Australians are on Facebook or Instagram, and we typically reach over 100,000 users.
Respondents are from 426 distinct LGAs. This study is built for national and place-type analysis, not individual LGA results, which is what Community Views is for. To get results you could take to a meeting or put in a strategy, you need a sample built for your area. At the state and territory level, sample sizes varied, and the full breakdown, along with all survey questions, is available on the Living in Australia platform.
We surveyed n=5,325 residents in total, giving a maximum margin of error at the 95% confidence interval of plus or minus 1.3%. In simple terms, this means that if 50% of survey respondents place importance on 'reliable and efficient public transport', we can be 95% confident that between 48.7% and 51.3% of the total Australian adult population place importance on it.
Upon completion, the survey sample was compared with the population of interest, all Australian residents aged 18 and over, to check whether responses to the demographic and life-stage questions were skewed relative to their actual population share. To account for this, we normalised the survey data using age and local area.
The limits of the method
This is a non-probability sample, weighted to correct the composition on age, gender and location, but we also want to acknowledge that people who choose to click a survey about their local area may be more engaged with local issues than average. That is why we position Living in Australia as a consistent benchmark for tracking change and comparing places on a like-for-like basis, rather than as a population estimate. The method is the same every year, so the comparisons are sound even where the absolute levels carry that caveat.
How well is Australia serving an ageing population, and who is getting left behind on health?
11 questions. Ageing and health arrived together far more often than separately, and several people asked from personal experience rather than professionally.
Retired social planner, regional Victoria
'Former social planner. I'm 76, live in Castlemaine, so I'm interested in the nexus between ageing pop and how wrap around services support like health are adjusting to meet growing demand and emerging disparity between getting old in regions versus city.'
Psychologist, NSW
'In the context of Health Care (particularly Mental Health) what are the key concerns of residents in regional and remote towns in NSW in compared to their Metropolitan city counterparts?'
Webinar attendee
'Is it a case of build it and they will come? I'm thinking of the Hervey Bay area that could be a growth area for seniors but it may be lacking healthcare facilities for future growth.'
Manager, NSW state transport agency
'I'd be interested in inter-generational reliance. Ie. trends on family caring responsibilities and how they shape where/how people live at different stages of life.'
Ageing does not automatically mean poorer wellbeing. In fact, older Australians report some of the strongest wellbeing and liveability outcomes in the country. They tend to feel better about their local area, report stronger mental and social wellbeing, and have more positive experiences across most aspects of liveability than younger Australians.
Their priorities are different, and the gap is bigger than you might expect. Of people aged 60 and over, 56% say health services are one of the five most important things about where they live, against 39% of people under 60. In regional areas that rises to 63%. They also care more about a strong sense of community (41% against 33%), and much less about housing (38% against 53%).
For people over 60, a strong sense of community is the single biggest thing driving both their mental health and their social wellbeing, ahead of all 15 other things we measure. The gathering itself is the benefit, whatever the session is about.
Where the gaps emerge is in staying connected to the things people need. For older Australians, public transport and the ability to easily reach services stand out as relative weaknesses. Aged care also becomes a much greater priority with age, and the demand is particularly strong outside the major cities. This means ageing in a well-serviced metropolitan community can be a very different experience from ageing in a regional or rural one.
Clarence Valley is the clearest case: a median age of 49, the largest growth to 2046 in the 85 and over group, and residents ranking high quality health services 3rd of 16 on importance and 13th on experience. Northern Beaches shows the same direction of travel from a stronger start. It is an ageing community where older residents generally report high levels of health, wellbeing and liveability, but Community Views has also shown that experiences of public transport and access to health services have declined over time. In a place where the older population is growing, those changes matter. Maintaining quality of life as a community ages is not only about providing aged care. It is also about ensuring people can continue to reach healthcare, services, activities and each other.
Health is an equity gap before it is an ageing gap
The bigger health divide is not between younger and older Australians. It is between people with different levels of access and disadvantage. The poorest experiences of health services are found in small country towns and among people experiencing financial pressure. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander residents and people living in more disadvantaged communities also report poorer experiences. Older Australians overall do not show the same pattern.
Health therefore becomes an equity issue as much as an ageing issue. People living with chronic health conditions report substantially poorer physical health and place greater importance on access to health services. Our modelling also suggests that improvements in local health services are associated with particularly strong mental health benefits for this group. That matters for where investment is targeted, because the same improvement in access to healthcare may have a much greater wellbeing impact in a community with high levels of chronic illness, disadvantage or poor existing access than in a community already well served.
The implication for decision-makers is to look beyond age alone. An ageing population tells you demand is changing, but it does not tell you where the greatest need sits. Combining age with evidence about health, disadvantage, transport, chronic illness and access to services provides a much clearer picture of who is at risk of being left behind, and where investment has the greatest potential to improve wellbeing.
What older residents actually ask for
Comments that talk about activities included: bring the transport with the activity ('more activities for the elderly with transportation to venues'), make it free and say so, run it on a weekday in daytime, and hold it somewhere real like a hall, library or pool. They also ask for it to be open to all ages rather than just for them, and to reach people living on their own and people new to the area. The topics most likely to fill a room are the practical ones they already worry about: getting around, staying in your own home, navigating health services and managing costs.
The full 2026 findings, presented
Watch it back
Jacquie Norton and Dan Evans present the ageing and health findings in full, with the place-type breakdowns behind them, along with everything else answered here.
How much does the local economy shape liveability, and where is cost of living biting?
11 questions, and an interesting gap. A prosperous local economy does not rank highly on importance, but people kept asking about it.
Corporate Strategic Planner, Western Australian tourism agency
'The impact of local economic activity (tourism, night time economy, events) that contribute to liveability.'
Vocational Pathways Coordinator, south-east Queensland growth city
'I'm interested in learning how community priorities vary across different regions, particularly around workforce development, education and training opportunities, housing affordability, and how local governments can use place-based evidence to support future planning and community outcomes.'
Tourism and Grants Officer, outer metropolitan South Australian council
'Interested in learning more about today's perceived livability in Australia and the changes in sentiment and/or the reality of Australian standard of living dropping and cost of living pressures that respondents express concerns about.'
Webinar attendee
'There's relatively little on how people experience their local economy. Info probably most useful for local govt etc. That's fine though, I imagine out of scope.'
Whilst having a prosperous local economy does not rank highly in terms of importance against the other 15 attributes, local economic activity matters a lot. How people feel about their local economy had the biggest effect on how people rate their own financial situation, and it was in the top five for mental health and social wellbeing as well. As the table in the first section shows, it is also the strongest single contributor to whether residents feel safe.
Evening activity was also tied to safety ('more shops open late so the city feels safe', 'street lighting so it's safer after dark'). When people feel comfortable using streets, shops and public spaces, they are more likely to spend time locally, support businesses and participate in community life. In turn, active and well-used places can feel safer because there are more people around and a greater sense that the area is cared for.
This means local prosperity is about more than jobs and economic output. It is also about whether growth and investment are visible in the quality of neighbourhoods, centres and public spaces.
Jobs and education shift with geography, housing does not
The value placed on 'good job prospects' is strongly geographic: 11% of inner-city residents name it a top-five priority against 32% in small towns, and the gap between what people want and what they get is more than four times wider in small country towns.
We do not ask why people move to a place. We ask what they find most important about the place they currently live. Sometimes if an attribute is well experienced, for example there are plenty of jobs, people will not deem it as important. It only becomes important when there is a lack of it. Good job prospects is an example of that.
Education is the opposite pattern. People want it about equally wherever they live, but the experience collapses from 7.4 out of 10 in the inner city to 4.6 in small country towns, so this is a supply gap rather than a difference in priorities. Housing affordability is the true universal: between 46% and 51% of residents name it a top-five priority in every settlement type, making it the least geographically variable priority of all 16 we measure, and it is rated worst in the least disadvantaged areas.
When growth outpaces the services that make it liveable
Ipswich shows why that distinction matters. The city is experiencing extraordinary population and economic growth, with 260,000 more residents expected by 2046, but Community Views has also identified pressure around housing affordability, congestion and access to services. Affordable housing has become harder for residents to access over time, while road congestion has emerged as one of the city's clearest areas of unmet need, ranked 4th of 16 on importance and 16th on experience. In fast-growing communities like Ipswich, the challenge is not simply to generate growth. It is to ensure that housing, transport, services and local amenity keep pace so residents experience that growth as an improvement in their own lives.
Cost of living adds another layer. Across Australia, financial pressure is widespread, but it is not experienced equally. Renters are particularly exposed. They report poorer financial circumstances, greater difficulty keeping up with payments and much stronger concern about housing than people who own their homes outright.
And the pressures change depending on where you live. In metropolitan areas, housing costs are often at the centre of the affordability story. In regional and rural communities, transport and fuel become much more significant, because residents often have fewer alternatives to driving and greater distances to travel for work, healthcare, education and everyday services.
That makes cost of living partly a place issue, not just a household finance issue. The affordability of housing matters, but so does the cost of reaching the things people need. A cheaper home can quickly become less affordable if it comes with long commutes, limited public transport or expensive travel to essential services.
The implication for decision-makers is to look beyond headline economic growth. A strong local economy should ultimately translate into a place where people can afford to live, move around, access services and participate in community life. Community Views helps show whether residents are actually experiencing those benefits, and which groups or parts of a community are missing out.
Only 4% felt their views were well considered. What do we do about that?
10 questions. This single statistic generated more reaction than any other finding, and the sharpest challenge.
Engagement Officer, regional NSW city council
'More about how only 4% of Australians feel their community's views are very well considered in local decision-making.'
Land Use Planning Coordinator, northern NSW council
'I think there needs to be a distinction between local decision-making and State government policies that remove local community decision-making from the housing development process. The latter can have a significantly greater impact on local liveability outcomes, particularly in regional areas.'
City Data Analyst, inner-metropolitan Victorian council
'Was there a difference in ages in how residents feel their views are considered?'
CEO, engagement consultancy
'Community satisfaction with government consultation processes and outcomes on important local projects eg Victoria's Big Build.'
Residents want to feel heard.
In the 2025 Living in Australia study, we asked residents how well they felt their community's views were considered in local decision-making. Only 4% said 'very well considered', 27% said 'somewhat well considered', but the majority, 61%, said not well considered or not considered at all.
When we look at what was driving these feelings, a key factor was attitudes to development. Two specific concerns predicted feeling unheard: perceived impacts to neighbourhood character, and perceived strain on infrastructure. The groups who felt less heard included mid-sized regional cities, growth areas, Gen Xers, and long-term residents.
Understanding these attitudes matters because it is not just about governance.
Residents who feel heard rate their local area far higher
| How well residents felt their community's views were considered | Share | Liveability Index, 0-100 |
|---|---|---|
| Very well considered | 4% | 71.0 |
| Somewhat well considered | 27% | 67.1 |
| Not well considered | 34% | 59.8 |
| Not considered at all | 27% | 49.9 |
| Don't know | 9% | - |
Percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding. Source: Living in Australia 2025, n=4,907.
People who did not feel their views were being considered also tended to report a poorer sense of social wellbeing. While we cannot say one causes the other, there is clearly a relationship between feeling connected to decision-making and how people experience the quality of life where they live.
These findings point to where consultation needs to happen earliest and most visibly, and that is before decisions are made, not after. Community Views can assist with this process, helping communities and organisations work together. Measuring how heard people feel, in the same way each year, means organisations can track whether specific efforts to engage, such as on a development, a plan or a precinct, reflect the real needs of the communities they affect, rather than assuming they do. And informing residents about the decisions that have been made matters as much as the consultation itself. Residents who hear and see that their input shaped a decision, even in part, are the ones who come to feel considered.
Why do outer growth areas record such low liveability?
Seven questions, and the topic people pressed hardest on.
Minister, national church organisation
'Sorry if I missed something but what are the main reasons outer metro growth areas reported the LOWEST levels of liveability? What do they want? What aren't they getting?'
Research Assistant, metropolitan Melbourne growth corridor
'In Casey growth suburbs (Clyde North) there is a lag in infrastructure being implemented in terms of shops, other amenities, healthcare and recreation, community swimming pool or leisure activities, as well as public transport. Car dependency has been reinforced by the time it is implemented. This means liveability is still a work in progress because residents still have to drive to access these services.'
Senior Strategic Planner, peri-urban South Australian council
'Managing gentrification, which at one level is a good thing (raised standards in an area) but can leave residents behind. How to bring community along when there is a real split. This is evident in Mount Barker where significant growth area has resulted in a new vs old sentiment.'
Valuer, regional Victorian property firm
'West Gippsland (a peri-urban location) experiencing considerable growth, lacking infrastructure and funding to support this rapid expansion.'
Growth area residents want the same things everyone wants. They just experience less of them. At 57.4 on the Overall Liveability Index, metropolitan outer growth areas sit effectively level with rural service areas and agricultural rural on 57.3, at the bottom of the country, and 6.7 points below established inner metro. The liveability score is not measuring a different set of values in the outer suburbs. It is measuring a bigger gap between what people rate as important and what they actually experience.
Three things drive that gap, and they are consistent across metropolitan growth areas.
Safety matters more here and is delivered less
Feeling safe is the most foundational contributor to liveability anywhere in the country, and it sits even higher in growth areas: 74% of growth area residents rate it a top priority. Their experience of it sits at 5.5 out of ten, materially below what residents of the middle and inner suburbs report. That matters disproportionately, because safety is not one attribute among sixteen. When people do not feel safe where they live, they participate less, and that has knock-on effects for health, for social connection and for the local economy. The important nuance is that perceptions of safety are shaped far more by the possibility of harm than by actual victimisation rates, which means the response is not only policing. Social connection is one of the strongest drivers of how safe people feel, which is why community infrastructure is a safety investment, not just a lifestyle one.
Transport connects people to opportunity, and rates worst of anything measured
In places where most workers still commute out, transport is what connects people to opportunity: to jobs, to education, to services, and to the hours they otherwise lose in traffic. Growth area residents rate reliable public transport at 57% importance, making your way to and from services at 40%, and a lack of road congestion at 35%. Road congestion returns an experience score of 4.3, the lowest score any group records on any attribute we measure, and making your way sits at 5.7. The things that matter most are the things falling shortest.
Social infrastructure arrives last
Health services, schools, aquatic centres, sports facilities, libraries, gathering spaces. These are what turn a fast-growing collection of new suburbs into a community, and they are consistently the last thing to arrive. Health services rate 42% on importance in growth areas and are among the weaker experiences reported.
The underlying cause is a timing problem rather than a design problem. Population arrives first, infrastructure follows, and in areas growing at three times the state rate the lag compounds year on year. Wyndham is the clearest illustration: from just over 85,000 people in 2001 to nearly 348,000 today, still running at about 6% a year against a state average closer to 2%, according to our National Forecasting Program. The roads, trains, hospitals and community spaces simply have not kept pace, and the gap between what residents need to go about their daily lives and what is actually there keeps widening.
The split between newcomers and long-term residents
Our survey shows that in growth areas across Australia, long-term residents, meaning those who have lived in their local area for ten years or more, name overpopulation as a top-three local issue about twice as often as newcomers do. In areas that are not growing, that gap disappears entirely.
More broadly, people who have lived somewhere ten years or more rate their area lower than recent arrivals on 14 of the 16 things we measure, and that holds even after accounting for age, where they live and whether they own or rent. Newcomers are comparing the place to where they came from. Long-term residents are comparing it to what it used to be.
When we look at what is actually linked to concern about overpopulation, it is the perception of congestion, and a sense that community feeling, safety and green space are poorly experienced locally. On health services, housing and public transport, the residents worried about growth rate their area no differently to those who are not.
So how do you bring a community along when there is a split? The productive question is not 'do you support growth?' It is 'what has to arrive with the growth, and when?' Newcomers and long-term residents tend to have similar values: feeling safe, access to nature, affordable housing, public transport and health services. That gives clues as to how to frame conversations around similarities rather than differences.
Our inner and middle suburbs weren't born that way. They were made that way, over decades, by exactly the kinds of transport and social infrastructure that growth areas are now asking for. That is proof of concept, not coincidence, and the 64.1 that established inner metro records today is the number growth areas are entitled to aim at. There is no reason we cannot achieve the same outcomes in outer suburban areas. It does not require invention. It requires focus and effort, and putting the investment where we are placing the people. What we should expect to see over the next decade is everyone improving, with the outer suburbs improving fastest.
When people say they want more green space, what do they actually mean?
Six questions, small in volume but sharp in quality. This is the theme where people questioned whether the survey instrument can carry the weight we put on it.
Senior Environmental Strategist, regional NSW city council
'When communities suggest wanting more green spaces is this grasslands such as parks and sportsfields or native bushland? When we say environmentally responsible, is this having less footprint/circular economy, protecting native bushland, reducing emissions or environment in the tense of the town as a place and using local industry? What explainers are provided for this survey to ensure it is understood as the same question to each person so we can compare apples to apples?'
Architect and heritage officer
'I am interested in how culture informs our built environment and how built environment influences how our culture is conducted. With climate change and climate change refugees being part of our future how can culture remain intact when it is immeshed in place.'
Senior Consultant, infrastructure advisory
'What people want from infrastructure especially in the context of climate change, extreme or changing weather, and affordability.'
Researcher
'Generational changes to expectations for social and environmental priorities.'
We agree completely. Concepts like 'access to nature', 'feeling safe' or 'environmental responsibility' can mean different things to different people and in different places. In our work, we deliberately use consistent, standardised wording for the quantitative measures so that results can be compared reliably across communities and over time. We then pair these measures with open-text questions that allow residents to explain, in their own words, what they value, what concerns them and what they would like to change. This helps us understand whether 'nature' means parks, sports fields, bushland, beaches or tree cover in a particular community.
Access to nature is one of the few priorities Australians agree on almost everywhere. More than half of Australians name access to the natural environment as one of the most important things about where they live, second only to feeling safe. At 7.6 out of 10 it is also the most positively experienced aspect of liveability. Protecting the natural assets people already value therefore has unusually broad support across different communities.
Two communities, one priority, different answers
We found from our Community Views work that an inner urban local area and a peri-urban local area both named 'access to the natural environment' as their third most important aspect of liveability, but the priorities according to residents were quite different.
Within the inner urban Melbourne location, improved access to nature was about expanding and protecting green space while improving the built environment to support a liveable, walk-friendly suburb. Numerous respondents called for additional parks, tree planting and landscaped streetscapes around shopping strips and train stations. Several suggestions involved greening under-used or neglected sites, adding playgrounds and community event areas, and increasing vegetation to support birds and insects.
Within the peri-urban area outside of Hobart, additional parks, walking tracks and bikeways were also mentioned, but there was also a strong emphasis on stricter environmental regulation in rivers and coastal waters, tighter controls on fishing and forestry, and measures to clean and preserve waterways. The protection of native flora and fauna, the reduction of feral animal impacts and the promotion of landcare projects also feature prominently.
The inner urban resident has limited contact with nature and wants more of it. The peri-urban resident has abundant contact and wants to protect it.
The same principle applies to climate action. Metropolitan communities tend to place greater emphasis on the transition to a lower-emissions future: renewable energy, sustainable transport, lower local emissions and sustainable buildings receive substantially stronger support in cities. Regional communities place relatively greater emphasis on conserving natural resources such as land, air and water, and supporting local production and consumption.
Climate risk is even more place-specific. Inner-city residents are much more concerned about extreme heat, while bushfire and drought become increasingly prominent outside the capitals. Flooding is particularly important in many regional centres, while cyclone risk shapes priorities in parts of northern Australia. So 'climate action' can mean tree canopy, shade and cooler streets in one community, but fire preparedness, water security or flood resilience in another.
The quantitative data tells us how important something is and how people experience it. The qualitative data helps us understand what people mean by it and what they want changed. National benchmarks can tell us that Australians value nature and environmental responsibility, but residents themselves tell decision-makers what protecting those things actually means in their place.
Frequently asked questions
Watch the session
Watch it on demand
Jacquie Norton and Dan Evans present the full 2026 findings, including the material behind every answer above.
Sources
National figures are from Living in Australia 2026, Informed Decisions. Survey of 5,325 Australian residents aged 18 and over, collected 9 to 28 April 2026 through social media advertising, with respondents from 426 local government areas. Maximum margin of error plus or minus 1.3% at the 95% confidence interval. Non-probability sample, normalised by age and local area.
Figures on how well residents feel their community's views are considered in local decision-making are from the 2025 wave, n=4,907. Remote Australia results are based on n=82 and should be treated with caution.
Population figures for Wyndham are from the Informed Decisions National Forecasting Program.
Named local examples (Ipswich, Clarence Valley, Canning, Northern Beaches, Rockhampton, Wyndham, and the unnamed inner Melbourne and peri-urban Hobart communities) are drawn from commissioned Community Views projects rather than the national sample.
Questions are quoted as submitted, with job title and place type retained and names and organisations removed.
Further reading: You are planning for growth. But will it be built? Your questions, answered, the 24 questions our forecasting team took on planning reform and feasibility.
