Client: City of Townsville, QLD | Project timeframe: 2020-2027
“Townsville City Council has been tracking liveability insights since 2019. In that time, we have used the data to guide and monitor overarching strategic directions while also concentrating on topics important to the community.”
Chris Jensen, urban and regional planner, City of Townsville
The problem
Like many regional cities, Townsville faces compounding challenges: increased competition for investment, climate change, industrial transition, population change, and the broader difficulty of improving liveability in an environment where state-wide performance is declining. These things all add complexity to long-term planning and a focus on community wellbeing.
Over the last few years, Queensland as a whole has experienced a notable drop in liveability, making it increasingly difficult for councils to maintain performance, let alone improve community sentiment. To counter this trend, Townsville needed a reliable, long-term evidence base to understand whether local actions were making a difference, where stability was being achieved, and how to prioritise future investment.
The solution
Creating a centralised, organisational data asset that provides transparent and clear community insights that can be used across the organisation has been the key benefit of Townsville’s Liveability Platform.
Townsville has been capturing liveability data from the community since 2019, and their dashboard makes accessible over 31,000 data sets from 4 different engagements. The dashboard is designed for easy use, and to provide value to every team. Some of the reports that have utilised the liveability data include:
- Vegetation and Nature Community Insights Report (2020)
- Gulliver Community Directions for COVID-19 Response (2020)
- Directions for the Corporate Plan 2026 (2021)
- Benchmarking Report (2023) comparing Townsville with selected regional centres to identify competitive strengths and weaknesses
- Economic Snapshot – Local Business Guidebook (2024)
- Liveability Study (2024)
The outcome
While Queensland’s average liveability score fell by 3% (from PX67 to PX64), Townsville’s liveability remained comparatively stable and even recorded a 1% increase between 2022 and 2024. This stability demonstrates measurable resilience in the face of the broader state-wide decline and reflects Townsville’s commitment to putting community wellbeing at the centre of strategy and planning.
Want to know more? You can hear it directly from us!
