• Energy Research
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Urban liveability is a global priority for creating healthy, sustainable cities. Measurement of policy-relevant spatial indicators of the built and natural environment supports city planning at all levels of government. Analysis of their spatial distribution within cities, and impacts on individuals and communities, is crucial to ensure planning decisions are effective and equitable. This paper outlines challenges and lessons from a 5-year collaborative research program, scaling up a software workflow for calculating a composite indicator of urban liveability for residential address points across Melbourne, to Australia’s 21 largest cities, and further extension to 25 global cities in diverse contexts.

Output data prepared for analysis of 25 diverse global cities by the Global Healthy and Sustainable City-Indicator Collaboration study, published in The Lancet Global Health Series on urban design, transport, and health. 2022. https://www.thelancet.com/series/urban-design-2022 Boeing, G. et al. (2022) ‘Using open data and open-source software to develop spatial indicators of urban design and transport features for achieving healthy and sustainable cities’, The Lancet Global Health, 10(6), pp. e907–e918. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(22)00072-9. Data outputs were generated through use of the global-indicators software tool, designed for this study and available from: https://github.com/global-healthy-liveable-cities/global-indicators Further detail on the methods used is provided in the following publication: Liu, S., Higgs, C., Arundel, J., Boeing, G., Cerdera, N., Moctezuma, D., Cerin, E., Adlakha, D., Lowe, M. and Giles-Corti, B. (2021), A Generalized Framework for Measuring Pedestrian Accessibility around the World Using Open Data. Geogr Anal. https://doi.org/10.1111/gean.12290 The study made use of OpenStreetMap, Global Human Settlements and custom data, and is made available under the Open Database License: http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/. Any rights in individual contents of the database are licensed under the Database Contents License: http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/dbcl/1.0/