paulry

Apparently Canberra is the bees knees

http://www.propertyoz.com.au/Advocac...spx?p=69&id=68

GarryP

Said no-one, ever*

Thing about these surveys is they are easy to tweak. The difference covering most cities is 1 or 2 - and it's easy enough to tweak the attributes, the weightings or the scores such that you get the result you want.

That usually means the person with the purse strings gets the result they wanted.

If you actually wanted something like the truth, you'd need more objective measures, with better calibrated orthogonal questions, a larger sample size, and some true independence. And you'd still get a result that wasn't particularly useful.

(* except the Canberra tourist board)

brits1

I certainly liked Canberra (quite different and austere architecture) but would not want to live there full time, I suppose it is really down to what suits your lifestyle rather than facts and figures.

paulry

'Must admit I haven't noticed who's holding the purse strings. Are there any particular attributes that don't seem right? The attributes of the cities I'm aware of looked correct to me. I'm happy for Canberra to be downgraded though.

The place scored badly on weather and housing. Weather is okay, it can be very hot in summer and very cold in winter but it's Australia's sunniest city. My family and I like it. ...The crap housing is about right

paulry

I agree. For us it's the right place at the right time. But fifteen years or so from now it wont be.

GarryP

I'm just looking at those questions from the standpoint of someone who's had to organise similar large scale surveys in the past. They are generally so woolly that you have the scope to make them what you like.

For instance, look at "The city is clean, well maintained and unpolluted". That tends to work against large cities by default, and depending on how you weight things, it can counterbalance "There is a wide range of cultural entertainment options", where the cities would win out. However, for most people the nightlife of Melbourne vs the nightlife of Canberra would have a much bigger impact on liveability.

The big warning sign is the relatively small variation across the cities. (63.4 for Melbourne vs 62.9 for Newcastle). It's a sure sign that they weren't really looking to differentiate the liveability scores in their methodology.

Molly Coddle

Very interesting.


From what I've read it seems to me like the people have spoken. It makes a refreshing change to actually read the people's point of view and not some jumped up knob-heads usual spiel.


The findings actually don't surprise me at all.


I personally think Sydney is overrated - I've been and spent lengthy periods there staying with family etc... I've a lot of family there who live in various areas of Sydney and a couple of my Aussie cousins who have lived in Sydney all their lives, 30 odd years, want to move away to a different part of Australia. They have told me it's changed a lot in the last 10 years and not for the better.


I've never been to Canberra but I've only ever heard good things about it. Education there is meant to be pretty good I'm told.


Same with Perth never been there, it looks lovely though but the cost of living is an absolute joke. I should imagine people who have lived in Perth for many years and had to put up with the dramatic rise in prices aren't that impressed.


Brisbane I liked, love the vibe and of course the weather up there.

Never been to Darwin and I don't know enough about it to pass comment.

bourbon-biscuit

And the report is in parts quite poorly written! Also worth noting how poorly sampled the respondents were, and that they were paid to participate and that it was an online survey. All in all, not much relevance to most.

I thought the most interesting part was the importance given to each factor: design, diversity, vibrance, and sustainability all feature as least important attributes. I wonder if Kiwis would rate the importance of attributes in the same pattern, or residents of European countries, etc.

zultan

I love living in Canberra. All the benefits and facilities of a large city, but none of the traffic or people. Great place to live, happy to keep it a secret.

the troubadour

Perth second from last position after Darwin sounds about right. Perth has priced itself out of respectable company.

paulry

I thought it was a good report too. Agreed about Sydney. I liked it when I first saw it in '99 but it's way too crowded now. There are highlights like the harbour, beaches and coastline but other than that no thank you. A good thing about being in Canberra is we have the peace and pleasantness here without being too far from big cities like Sydney. We visit Sydney about once every three months or so to visit family, etc but are always glad to get back to Canberra.

chris955

So they interview about 500 people in each place and from what I saw most of the scores hovered around the 50% mark for most of the points. So 500 people are sort of happy in most of the places. I cant believe Newcastle scored overall pretty close to everywhere else, Newcastle ?

paulry

Kinda makes sense that a good percentage of people would be satisfied with where they're living else they would have moved. Been a while since I've bumped into someone who really wasn't happy here.

Beoz

Newcastle is on the way up. The airport with links to the other major cities also helps. By the beach, 2 hour drive from Sydney. Throw in a fast train line to Sydney and it would certainly be more than liveable.

Amazulu

I wish we would start building some ground breaking infrastructure. High speed rail now - not in 20 years time

$1.8t in super and growing at a ridiculous rate - let's harness some of that