Liveable city

Access and connectivity domain

Liveable city

Canberra is often ranked as a highly liveable city when compared internationally, but what do we think about the liveability of our local area?

Local area liveability

This measure shows how Canberrans feel about the liveability of their local area. High liveability supports quality of life, health and wellbeing.

In 2024 local liveability remained strong, with 89.0% of adults in the ACT finding their local area very liveable.

Nearly 90% of Canberrans also recommend the ACT as a good place to live – well above the national average of 77.0%.

In general, people expressed high satisfaction with:

Canberrans are less satisfied with:

Data for this indicator are sourced from the University of Canberra Living well in the ACT Region survey. Detailed survey data, survey user guide and published reports from the survey can be accessed at https://www.regionalwellbeing.org.au/living-well-in-the-act-region/.

Line graph of percentage of respondents considering their local area to be very liveable, between 2020 and 2024.

In 2024:

  • 89.0% agreed that their local area was very liveable
  • 5.6% neither agreed nor disagreed
  • 5.4% disagreed.

The Living Well in the ACT Region survey, conducted by the University of Canberra, aims to measure, track and understand the wellbeing and resilience of adult residents living in the Australian Capital Territory region of Australia. It examines factors known to affect wellbeing and resilience at the individual, household, community and regional level.

When generating data for the ACT, statistical weighting is used to address differences between the sample of people who respond to the survey, and the characteristics of the ACT adult population.

Data are produced from this survey for different groups of people in the ACT. The ‘overall response’ category represents responses at the ACT population level. Where reliable estimates can be produced, data are also presented for Canberrans by: gender, age, cultural background, gender identity and sexuality, carer role and experience of disability. Not all differences over time or between groups are statistically significant: information on confidence intervals for the data presented here is available in data tables that can be accessed at https://www.regionalwellbeing.org.au/living-well-in-the-act-region/.

Care is needed when interpreting the differences in findings between groups as the descriptive statistics published here show where there are differences in wellbeing, but not what has caused those differences in wellbeing.

Further information about the survey can be found at Living Well in the ACT Region or by contacting regionalwellbeing@canberra.edu.au.