Govt launches Cities Performance Framework

The federal government has launched Australia’s first National Cities Performance Framework to help governments, industry and community track the progress and performance of major cities.

The new framework ranks cities on performance indicators including jobs and skills, housing, infrastructure and investment, livability and sustainability, innovation and digital opportunities and governance, planning and regulation.

Results from the framework have been published on a new smart cities dashboard. The dashboard shows, for example, that the Gold Coast-Tweed has the highest ratio of new business entries compared to exits.

But Canberra is leading in terms of households with broadband (86%), and the portion of patent applications per 100,000 people (55.8), and Sydney has the highest proportion of workers in knowledge intensive services (21.1%).

In total the framework has 46 indicators, such as the proportion of jobs accessible within 30 minutes by car, housing price to income ratio, access to green space, employment growth and youth unemployment.

Assistant Minister for Digital Innovation said the framework is designed to encourage individual cities to improve their outcomes along these criteria.

“The timing of this is fantastic because we’ve just got a really comprehensive dataset from the most recent Australian census, which allows us to see the most updated picture of the economic and growth profile of these cities,” he said.

“The specific goals, to inform potential future City Deals, will come from these metrics. It’s very obvious when you look at each of these cities what the challenges are that we have to address as a top priority and our City Deals will do exactly that.”

The initial focus of the framework is on Australia’s 21 largest cities with a population above 80,000. It also includes Western Sydney as a separate category, in line with the government’s Western Sydney City Deal.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/jamesteohart

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