New housing supply, population growth and access to social infrastructure
We are pleased to publish the following new AHURI report today.
Report Title
New housing supply, population growth and access to social infrastructure
AHURI Final Report No.356
Authors
Somwrita Sarkar, The University of Sydney
Emily Moylan, The University of Sydney
Hao Wu, The University of Sydney
Rashi Shrivastava, The University of Sydney
Nicole Gurran, The University of Sydney
David Levinson, The University of Sydney
What this research is about?
This study focusses on the potential to better inform the planning, scheduling, delivery, maintenance, and coordination of social infrastructure in the rapidly growing greenfield areas of major Australian cities through the use of big data sources and techniques. The research focusses on greenfield areas of Sydney, Brisbane and Perth greater metropolitan regions to demonstrate data sources and methods that can be replicated in other locations.
This study used several novel data sources to develop a monitoring and coordination tool that enables mapping of fine spatial scale accessibility for various social infrastructure dimensions. The tool is used to demonstrate accessibility to schools and hospitals, including their hierarchical distributions. The authors also conducted a panel discussion and workshop with several local and state government officials, along with private industry consultants and practitioners, to reveal how the tool could be beneficial in different policy and planning contexts.
Findings indicated that social and community infrastructure is critical to the effective functioning of rapidly growing urban regions, but lag times between population growth and new infrastructure delivery are pervasive in new greenfield development areas. The research also found timely fine-grained spatial data is critical to informing and measuring performance in spatial planning and infrastructure delivery processes, but existing datasets are limited.
This study breaks new ground, as it extends the idea of accessibility to social infrastructure as a critical facility to support daily life.