Sustainability and Liveability in Southbank Parkland, Brisbane

This report examines the concepts of sustainability and liveability within the context of Southbank Parkland in Brisbane, Australia. It begins by exploring the diverse perspectives on these concepts from local residents. The report then provides demographic data of the area, sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, including age, gender, income, education, and ethnicity. The core of the report focuses on liveability, specifically assessing the safety aspect of the parkland, and its impact on the community. The report analyzes the current state of safety measures, including CCTV cameras and police presence, and acknowledges that while these measures exist, criminal activities still occur. The report also highlights the need for the government to address issues related to income, education, and social crimes to enhance the quality of life for the residents, and proposes recommendations such as increased police force, support for volunteers, and strategic placement of CCTV cameras to improve safety and, consequently, liveability and sustainability. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of a holistic approach to urban planning, considering social, economic, and environmental factors for creating a thriving community.

Running head: SUSTAINABILITY AND LIVABILITY
SUSTAINABILITY AND LIVABILITY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Defining what sustainability and liveability means to a community
Sustainability and liveability are two of the topical discussion; the entire world is
conversing nowadays because of its linkage to environment, urbanization and out surrounding
neighbourhood (Wang et al., 2015). However, it is important to understand the understanding of
local people related to this topic. While talking to Jane (28), she explains the concept of
sustainability and liveability as the planning of future cities. She understands the need of eco-
friendly societies to make human life sustainable and liveable within the society. On the other
hand, while talking to Adam (45) and his wife Anna (47), he mentioned these concepts as global
needs and focused on the points that it should not be restricted for a city planning rather, the
entire world should implement these concepts so that sustainable development can be achieved.
Jamie (32) and Roberts (22) also determined sustainability and liveability as the need of
humanity in current scenario and is the only mean through which, financial, economical, social
and environmental factors can be optimized.
For this assessment, Southbank parkland in Brisbane was chosen as the suburb area. This
place is located at the south bank of Brisbane, situated in Queensland Australia. The modified
parkland on the transformed site of Brisbane's was officially opened for the public to visit in
1992. It is spread in 17.5 hectares and consists of wetlands, rainforests, grasslands and plazas. It
hosts millions of people for cultural organizations and festivals or events and more than
12,000,000 people visit this place every year (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2018).

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South Bank Brisbane (Australian Bureau of Statistics (2018)

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The demographics and data of this location was accessed from Australian Bureau of
Statistics (2018) and has been presented below.
Demographics
Age Median age 30
Gender male 50.3% and female 49.7%
Income $979
Education 36.7%
Unemployment 908 people (7.8%)
Ethnicity Australia 20.6%
China 14.7%
India 5.3%
Malaysia 4.7% and
Indonesia 3.4%

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Liveability is the factor that defines a community’s lifestyle, quality of life, educational
and employment opportunity, equity, stability economic and cultural prosperity and so on. At the
local level, in Australia, different communities are developing more striking and purposeful
social and business centers, reasonably priced housing, transit consumption land use to shield the
open space. In each case, livability should be defined in a way that permits indicators of
liveability for that particular community to be recognized and assessed (Fox & Pettit, 2015).
Safety is such an indicator of liveability that will be assessed in this assignment. Majority of
environmentalists and sociologists determined that safety is the source that helps people to
achieve sustainable and livable life. Badland et al. (2012), founds that safety is one of the key
factor that directly affects the social determinants of health. To create a liveable community
around, safety of human, its health its assets are the primary factor that should be kept in mind.
In case of Southbank park land, presence of safety equipment should be installed so that people
around the place can feel safe and valued. Lowe et al., (2015) on the other hand, determined that
sustainable and secured life is the key for healthy society and environment and safety and
security related issues creates entropy in the society and increasing the risk of criminal activities.
The data collected from Australian governmental websites determine that majority of places in
the Parkland area are covered with CCTV cameras and other safety equipment. The strength of
this approach of the local government to involve the providing the people with safety and
security or influencing them to involve in such actions for social awareness. However, the
government is failed to improve state of criminal offenses in that area as there are still few
criminal activities that are carried out in Southbank parkland (Namazi-Rad et al., 2012)).
While analyzing research evidence, all the findings from the research was accumulated
and it was found that the population of Southbank parkland is diverse and belongs to different

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origins. Further, the rate of education and income is also quite less than the entire Australia
(Olofsson, Hiselius & Várhelyi 2016). Hence the government should focus on implementing
several strategies so that the livelihood of the citizen of this provision can be improved using
safety as the indicator. Providing the people with good employment opportunity or increasing the
rate of education in this location can provide the people with an opportunity to indulge in
productive works and achieve a level of lifestyle and enhance their own sustainability and
liveability, instead of attempting criminal activities. Finally, the local government should focus
on matters related to healthy, social crimes, and educational drop out so that these incidents
cannot lead to safety related issues in the area (Fox & Pettit, 2015).
While formulating plans to change the state of safety, there are few recommendations that
the local and state government should implement to increase liveability and sustainability among
the people. The government should provide police force in the area to manage the social and
people gatherings that the antisocial people use to attempt criminal activities (Lowe et al., 2012).
Special support should be provided to young volunteers who take part in such safety and security
so that they can provide secured society to the tourists and countrymen who come to visit the
place (Olofsson, Hiselius & Várhelyi 2016). Further, much more CCTV cameras and forces
should be implemented in the areas where criminal offenses carried out in extensive amount
(Badland et al., 2012).

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References
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2018). Southbank : Region Data Summary. Retrieved from
http://stat.abs.gov.au/itt/r.jsp?
RegionSummary&region=206041126&dataset=ABS_REGIONAL_ASGS&geoconcept=
REGION&measure=MEASURE&datasetASGS=ABS_REGIONAL_ASGS&datasetLG
A=ABS_NRP9_LGA&regionLGA=REGION&regionASGS=REGION
Badland, H., Whitzman, C., Lowe, M., Davern, M., Aye, L., Butterworth, I., ... & Giles-Corti, B.
(2014). Urban liveability: emerging lessons from Australia for exploring the potential for
indicators to measure the social determinants of health. Social science & medicine, 111,
64-73. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.04.003
Fox, M. S., & Pettit, C. J. (2015, October). On the completeness of open city data for measuring
city indicators. In Smart Cities Conference (ISC2), 2015 IEEE First International (pp. 1-
6). IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/ISC2.2015.7366147
Lowe, M., Whitzman, C., Badland, H., Davern, M., Aye, L., Hes, D., ... & Giles-Corti, B.
(2015). Planning healthy, liveable and sustainable cities: how can indicators inform
policy?. Urban Policy and Research, 33(2), 131-144. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1080/08111146.2014.1002606
Namazi-Rad, M. R., Perez, P., Berryman, M., & Lamy, F. (2012). An experimental
determination of perceived liveability in Sydney. Retrieved from:
http://ro.uow.edu.au/infopapers/2371/

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Olofsson, Z., Hiselius, L., & Várhelyi, A. (2016). Development of a tool to assess urban
transport sustainability: The case of Swedish cities. International Journal of Sustainable
Transportation, 10(7), 645-656. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15568318.2015.1055535
Wang, Q., Tang, S., Hu, J., Chen, X., & Wang, L. (2015). Performance Measurement System for
Assessing Transportation Sustainability and Community Livability. Transportation
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3141/2531-13