Amenity and liveability (local amenities, climate, ratings of amenity and liveability)

What is this domain – and what does it tell us about wellbeing?

The amenity and liveability of the environment a person lives in – meaning the communities and settings in which they live, work and engage in everyday activities – influence a person’s wellbeing. The term ‘amenity’ refers both to the presence of specific amenities such as local recreational areas, parks, walking paths, community halls, and built infrastructure etc, and also to the overall amenity or ‘pleasantness’ of a local area, including its climate, landscape, and natural features. Some define ‘amenity’ as encompassing all aspects of liveability of a community, meaning they also consider factors such as crime levels, friendliness,  and availability of services part of ‘amenity’. Communities that have high liveability, meaning they have good access to services, transport options, affordable living, and good amenities and amenity, support wellbeing of their residents. As ‘amenity’ and ‘liveability’ are both broad concepts, indicators of amenity and liveability commonly overlap with indicators of other domains of wellbeing such as access to services and infrastructure and social connection.

Measures of amenity and liveability can range from indicators of the quality of the local built and natural environment (e.g. tree canopy, green areas), access to specific amenities that improve enjoyability of local living, such as local parks, walking paths, access to transport, and access to services and infrastructure. Indicators may measure the ‘supply’ of amenity in a community (area or number of recreation facilities, services etc), or the ‘outcomes’ of having that supply, in the form of resident’s ratings of the overall amenity and liveability of a particular place.

Connections to other domains

This domain is strongly connected to several other domains, particularly standard of living, environment, and access to services and infrastructure. Some wellbeing frameworks consider amenity and liveability separately to these other domains; some include all of them under the umbrella of ‘liveability’, while still others incorporate measures of amenity and liveability as part of other domains, rather than as their own domain.

Indicator options

Amenity and liveability indicators always measure attributes of geographic places. Some indicators measure supply or access to amenity, while others measure the outcomes expected to be achieved if there is good amenity and livebility, such as how people feel about their local community. Still other indicators infer levels of amenity based on the extent to which there is population or other change, based on the assumption that local amenity is a key driver influencing population change in a community. Many indicators require direct measurement via survey, as there isn’t readily available information for rural and regional areas of Australia. Others are available from publicly available data sets.

The indicators listed below are those specific to amenity and liveability of a community as a whole, but do not include measures of access to key services and infrastructure – which are included in the Services and infrastructure domain – or of housing, which is examined in the Housing and home domain. Measures of environmental health can also have some overlap with amenity and liveability measures. Indicators below also include indicators of one of the common consequences of declining amenity and liveability – change in population.

• Confidence in maintaining local population
• Migration intentions
• Number/area of amenities (e.g. parks, paths, venues, natural features)
• Population & migration trends
• Satisfaction with local amenity and liveability 
• Usage of amenities (parks, waterways, walking paths, sporting grounds)
• Water quality (drinking water, waterways)