Planning Healthy, Liveable and Sustainable Cities: How Can Indicators Inform Policy?

Abstract

Creating ‘liveable’ communities that are healthy and sustainable is an aspiration of policymakers in Australia and overseas. Indicators are being used at the national, state and local level to compare the liveability of cities and regions. Yet, there are challenges in the adoption of such indicators. Planning scholars see a challenge in creating indicators that measure something publicly valued, while public health researchers are concerned about scant systemic research on relationships between policies, the built environment, and health and well-being. This article provides an overview of liveability indicators used to date in Australia and internationally. It then outlines the results of consultations with Melbourne-based academics and decision-makers, on how to increase their utility and support the creation of healthy, liveable and sustainable cities.

澳大利亚和其他国家的政策制定者都希望创建健康、可持续的“宜居” 社区。国家、州和地方都提出了比较城市和地区宜居性的指标。规划专家认为用指标测量公众珍惜的事物会有难度，而公共健康研究者则担心对政策、人造环境、健康与幸福之间的关系缺少系统的研究。本文对澳大利亚和其他国家使用的宜居指数做一总体评价。随后概述墨尔本学者和决策者的咨询意见，他们就如何提高指标可用度，并支持健康、宜居、可持续城市的建设，发表了意见。

Keywords::

• Liveability
• social determinants of health
• indicators
• integrated planning
• Melbourne

Funding

Funding for this project from the Melbourne Social Equity Institute and Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute is gratefully acknowledged. An NHMRC Principal Research Fellow Award supports BGC [#1004900] and ML is supported by the Victorian Government Department of Health. VicHealth supports the McCaughey VicHealth Community Wellbeing Unit members.