This is truly shocking; Australia’s capital cities, even Adelaide, seem to be terrible places for indigenous people, women and the non-binary, according to the State of Place report by Place Score. The same report showed that liveability for many Australians also decreased, but let’s not worry about that. Many indigenous people are living in lower socio-economic suburbs; it is understandable that they would feel less than happy about life. I emphasise, being at the bottom too. But I puzzle as to why women are lobbed in this category, since their group straddles all economic classes. And I have no idea why the non-binary are not doing well. I thought that they would be dancing on sunshine, but there you go. It is a great mystery.
“Australia's big cities, like Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide, often rank as some of the most liveable in the world but not everyone rates them highly. A new report has found First Nations, non-binary and women have some of the worst living experiences.
Australia is said to be getting less liveable for First Nations people and some other community groups.
A new State of Place report by data research organisation Place Score shows that liveability in Australia decreased overall for many Australians.
But First Nations people and non-binary groups are the most hit.
Chief Executive of Place Score Kylie Legge says the report highlights what people care about in their neighbourhoods.
“The census shows that what we all want neighbourhoods that are green, walkable, that are really well cared for and where we care for each other, as well as being quite compact in that there's sort of easy to get from your house to local shops or parks or other services.”
The report surveyed over 25,000 Australians of different social and cultural backgrounds to get a sense of what it's like to live in various communities across the country.
The findings make up the country's largest social research database on liveability, and they provide insights into the satisfaction and wellbeing of people from various places and demographics.
According to the report, liveability varies, sometimes significantly, depending on individual neighbourhoods and the demographics within them.
Authors of the report suggest that not all neighbourhoods are created equal and not all communities are enjoying the same advantages.
Ms Legge says some minority groups reported the lowest scores for liveability.
"The two groups, unfortunately, with some of the lowest levels of visibility, or those people who identify as First Nations or that don't identify as male or female. We know these groups are some of the most vulnerable and kind of, I guess, because they also in many cases, minorities, but it really reveals that they're not experiencing the same levels of visibility as the rest of the community. And it's across the board. So, their scores are quite low across all 50 metrics."
Dr Lucy Gunn is a Senior Research Fellow with the Healthy Liveable Cities Lab at the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT in Melbourne.
Ms Gunn says the results are not unusual.
"We do know that a lot of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders people, some of them live in low SES areas. So, when we're looking at this from an objective point of view, using data that is coming from the ABS, which is the Australian Bureau of Statistics, using their socio-economic index for areas, we tend to find that a lot of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People live in poorer areas, essentially. And so, when they're looking at quality of their environment, they're rating it given that it's a poor environment. So, what we tend to find is that we've got people who individually might be of low socio-economic status, but then they live in these poor environments as well. And so it's not really surprised that we see them rating the liveability their areas, not particularly well in this report."
Although non-binary and First Nations people had the lowest liveability scores, other groups with low scores are single parent families and people between the ages of 25 to 44.
And women are sitting on a lower liveability matrix compared to men.
"I think we have really revealed that there's a connection between the density of neighbourhoods. being lower densities are definitely less liveable for communities, from their perspective, and that we also see a relationship between poor liveability, social and economic disadvantage as well as poor mental health. So better neighbourhoods, better financially as well as for the wellbeing of the community."
And Ms Gunn believes that while Australian cities are doing well, more needs to be done across all parts of the country, especially in rural areas.
She says it is important to have socially cohesive and inclusive spaces that are environmentally sustainable for all.
"A continual problem that we seem to have is that we have lower density cities, in the middle and outer ring suburbs, and we have less public transport and less destinations for people to go to. And this creates all sorts of unusual situations that can lead to inequities. So inequities and access to employment, inequities in access to education and also we tend to end up pushing people because of how to housing affordability and also availability Now, onto the fringes. And so this creates more inequities for certain groups of our society. And so this is where I think Australia really needs to do a little bit more work in terms of making sure that their cities broadly, so middle and outer ring suburbs, as well as the inner suburbs all have good access to the key ingredients that make for liveable cities."