Background and aims
Global Research was contracted by the City of Melbourne (CoM) to undertake analysis and reporting on ten neighbourhood community engagement projects.
— CBD
— Kensington
— Southbank
— West Melbourne
— South Yarra
— Parkville
— Carlton
— East Melbourne
— North Melbourne
— Docklands
In 2021, CoM commenced work on a Neighbourhood Model to strengthen understanding and work with different communities across the city as it emerged from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a place-based approach, the city sought to better understand the strengths, needs and priorities of residents, students, businesses, workers and visitors across the municipality, and to use this knowledge to guide its work. Ensuring opportunity of access and participation of diverse voices, views and people was key to embedding this work through neighbourhood planning processes and projects, developed in partnership with its communities.
Each neighbourhood, with its specific demographic makeup, physical infrastructure, land use patterns, and residential, commercial, and transport particulars, was consulted by CoM to find out what people thought about their neighbourhood; their priorities, what they liked, what they wanted changed, how safe they felt how resilient they felt their neighbourhood is or would be in the event of a disaster, and their aspirations for their area.
In 2024, CoM ran a follow up survey to check in with its communities to find out how it is doing in implementing its Neighbourhood Model. This ‘refresh’ on the 2021/22 Neighbourhood Plans enabled CoM to monitor local needs and track progress with council priorities. For each neighbourhood, residents, students, business owners, and workers were asked about their wants and needs for their neighbourhoods.
Our role
In 2021/22, hundreds of people contributed to each of the 10 consultations, with Global Research receiving copious amounts of qualitative and quantitative data to analyse and formulate into a cohesive set of ten comparable and informative reports.
The range of consultation methods meant cleaning and sometimes restructuring the data into useable formats, suitable for comparison and analysis – this ranged from survey data to online postcard comments and longer transcribed workshop conversations. Making the different data forms as consistent as possible meant we could thematically code each comment into a consistent analysis framework.
In addition to analysing all the qualitative and quantitative data as whole datasets, Global Research queried the data for insights from the perspective of specific demographic categories, such as gender. This enabled deeper insights to be uncovered for each neighbourhood.
Over 4,400 people contributed to the neighbourhood survey in 2024. In this consultation, Global Research once again analysed the data quantitatively and qualitatively to give an accurate snapshot of what people’s impressions are of their communities and neighbourhoods. Where possible, we compared the results from the most recent survey with the results from the previous engagement. Slight differences in question wording meant that respondents may have interpreted the questions differently. This was accounted for in analysis.
Design and method
In 2021/22, data was gathered by CoM primarily using an online survey hosted on the Participate Melbourne platform, supported by pop-up events, focus groups, phone interviews, online comment forums, and an interactive mapping tool that allowed respondents to geotag location and leave a comment or suggestion specific to that place.
Because CoM recognised the distinctive needs and situations of each neighbourhood, the investigation targeted slightly differing aspects of life in each suburb. Those with connections to Docklands, for example, were asked about work, while in the CBD, safety questions were emphasised. This enabled CoM to quickly get to the heart of matters pertinent to future planning, and meant, for Global Research, a slightly different coding framework was required for each project.
In 2024, the consultation was open from 21 February to 31 March, and captured new data from each neighbourhood. Using the CoM data, Global Research organised the responses to each question into theme/topics/sub-topics. Results were queried by neighbourhood to see which topics arose as most important to each neighbourhood. Additionality, cohort analysis revealed that certain issues were more prevalent within certain demographic groups.
Result
The engagement was designed to inform the development of ten neighbourhood plans that show a shared vision for each area, that enable each area to showcase its strengths and assets, and to identify priorities to improve outcomes for the area.
In order to best represent the ideas and visions expressed by the community, a variety of different reporting styles were used, including detailed and summary reports as well as visually appealing infographics.
The 2024 reporting was conducted in three phases:
Phase I reporting found that ‘affordable housing and homelessness support’ and ‘more plants, trees and open spaces’ were a top three priority for almost all neighbourhoods.
Phase II reporting delved deeper into what respondents discussed in terms of local needs and priorities over the next four years. In addition, several demographic groups were targeted to see how their experience of their neighbourhood is tracking.
Phase III reporting was a quantitative comparison of changes in opinion on respondents’ respective neighbourhoods between this engagement and the previous neighbourhood engagement.
CoM has uploaded content from the Global Research reports to its neighbourhood portal; for exampling the findings for the CBD are available here.
Outcome
At the conclusion of the 2021/22 project, an epic suite of ten reports, infographic summary sheets, and summary reports were provided to CoM who are using these to inform decision making and planning for each neighbourhood.
In this consultation, key overarching priorities were identified across the neighbourhoods with respondents consistently valuing:
— The proximity of their suburb to the CBD alongside the residential feel of their area;
— the unique ‘personalities’ of their areas;
— the availability of ‘day to day’ business there (such as shopping for food and grocery items, and having local banks, hairdressers, and cafés in close proximity);
— public transport and road connectivity;
— parks and open spaces, and places for the community to get together.
People from all neighbourhoods believed that it is important to be connected to their local community, with many comments calling for more community and open spaces reiterating this.
The findings from the 2024 survey provides CoM with a comprehensive understanding of the current wants and needs of each neighbourhood, which will be used to inform the development of CoM’s next Council Plan 2025-2029, as well as future council projects and strategies. These projects and strategies include Homes Melbourne and the Make Room transitional housing project, the Affordable Housing, Urban Forest, Open Space, and Transport strategies, the Graffiti and Management Plan, and Public Art and Connected Neighbourhoods projects.
See the Melbourne neighbourhood portal here: Neighbourhoods | Participate Melbourne