Central Adelaide and the Adelaide Hills have been ranked as the most liveable metropolitan areas in Australia in a new national survey.
Key points:
- Adelaide has jumped into the top 10 to be ranked Australia’s most liveable city
- Safety, affordable housing, social cohesion and lack of traffic helped
- Survey results indicate the issues people care about this year have changed
Market research company Ipsos found Adelaide was the only place that rated above average across 16 liveability factors, such as safety, affordable housing and health services.Ipsos public affairs director Stuart Clark said people were not asked to elaborate on their responses, but Adelaide performed well on key metrics.
“Things like feeling safe and affordable housing, it has performed well, and also things like social cohesion and lack of road congestion – compared to some of the other city areas it does really well,” Mr Clark said.
“Adelaide, in fact, was not in the top 10 last year, so you could speculate about why it’s dropped into that top 10 – into the number one space.
“Maybe that is because people are spending a bit more time around their homes in the local area and really enjoying that space.”
Uraidla in the Adelaide Hills. ABC Radio Adelaide: Spence Denny
Sydney’s Sutherland Shire was the runner-up, with inner Perth number three.Adelaide’s western, southern and northern suburbs fared worse in the survey, ranked 15th, 16th and 26th respectively, out of the 42 metropolitan areas in Ipsos’s annual Life in Australia project, one of the country’s largest annual studies of community values and liveability.
The worst metropolitan area for liveability was Sydney’s south-west.The survey, which intervied asked people in each area about the importance and performance of different attributes of where they lived.
Among regional areas, the Northern Territory outback was ranked worst by survey respondents.Mr Clark said this year saw a significant change in the issues people listed as important.
“If you think back to January this year, when we had the bushfires sort of raging across the nation, the environment was the number one issue by a long way,” he said.”
As soon as COVID hit, that dropped down, hugely, to number five.
“Things like jobs and the economy and health have shot up into that top three, so those are really key issues at present, and they have been since around March. So we’ve seen a real change in people’s priorities in life.”
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