Brisbane’s a great place to live, but it’s not without its issues: study
The majority of residents who call Brisbane home consider the Queensland capital a great place to live and view their quality of life positively, according to a council study.
The Better Brisbane Index 2023-24 measured residents’ perceptions of life in Brisbane now and in the future, benchmarking it against other Australian capitals.
Of the Brisbane residents interviewed, 92 per cent rated their quality of life positively – higher than Sydney, Melbourne and neighbouring south-east Queensland residents included in the survey.
The Better Brisbane Index 2023-24 was based on 2467 online interviews with Brisbane residents and those from other capital cities and parts of south-east Queensland. Credit: Courtney Kruk
Three-quarters of the city’s residents would rather live in Brisbane than any other place in Australia; 90 per cent recommended the capital as a great place to live; and 85 per cent agreed that Brisbane offered a good standard of living.
The proportion of residents concerned about how Brisbane will change in the future and manage growth remained stable at 64 per cent.
At the beginning of the pandemic, 68 per cent of residents expressed concern about future change. This dropped over the next two years, before climbing to 62 per cent in 2022-23, and up again in the recent survey.
Population growth and planning, followed by housing affordability, were key issues of concern for surveyed residents.
Brisbane experienced unprecedented interstate migration during COVID, with estimates suggesting an extra 2.2 million people will call south-east Queensland home by 2046 – almost 500,000 in the Brisbane City Council area alone.
The city’s rapid growth has outpaced supply and, combined with inflation, construction shortages, the cost of living and low vacancy rates, driven Brisbane’s burgeoning housing crisis.
Rents in Brisbane have increased 56.8 per cent since 2014 – from a weekly average of $389 to $610 – and Brisbane property prices have risen by 65 per cent since 2020, almost double the Australian capital city average of 34 per cent, according to QCOSS, the peak housing body for the social service sector.
Homelessness is also rising – up by 22 per cent since 2017. The latest census data showed approximately 10,000 people were homeless across south-east Queensland on any given night.
The survey did not provide further details on specific planning issues of concern to residents, other than to say 40 per cent noted population growth and planning as important issues.
This could therefore apply to Olympic venue and infrastructure planning (currently under review by the LNP state government), housing, and public transport infrastructure planning.
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