Initial results of a United Nations program measuring the quality of life in Logan have been released.
The program, which saw mayor Jon Raven travel to Cairo, Egypt to pitch Logan to countries from across the globe, has been in the works for more than a year.
Only eight cities from around the world were chosen to participate in the three-year pilot initiative.
A range of factors in each chosen city are being measured with the end goal of combining and creating benchmarked data to measure and compare the ‘quality of life’ in local and regional governments.
Factors like public transport, education, health, housing, social cohesion, crime and economy have been measured in Logan.
Specific data, including the exact number of people who have convenient access to public transport and the amount of money residents spend both in and out of the city, have been released in a draft report.
The report was critical of the insufficient number of jobs in the city, the absence of a thriving night-time economy, the level of car dependency, and the perception of unsafe train stations.
At a city planning meeting last week, one councillor was skeptical of the results.
“It says 3625 people in New Beith have access to public transport. This is a really far stretch,” Cr Natalie Willcocks said.
“I am just worried that they are doing desktop reviews and not actually driving it and seeing it.”
Mayor Jon Raven said the data was “incredibly useful” and a tool no other council in Australia had access to.
“It will let us do better planning and spend money efficiently for the biggest possible impact,” he said.
While UN-Habitat helped cover the costs of data collection and reporting, as well as travel (economy airfares, hotel expenses and travel incidentals), council voted to fund an upgrade to business class flights for the mayor, premium economy flights for the Director Growth Economy and Sustainability, and travel for the mayor’s chief of staff.
This cost $20,400 – approximately 15 cents per ratepayer for the year.
Mayor Jon Raven said the trip was a unique opportunity to “put Logan on the map”.
“In Cairo there were investors and innovators who had never heard of Logan and had never thought of investing in Queensland or Australia. Now they’re interested – because they want to help to build a modern city like Logan. They want to be part of what is happening here.
“We all need to work together on making Logan a city of choice, where people aspire to move their families and businesses here because of the opportunities and community.”
