The Mount Gambier City Council is encouraging residents, traders, staff, shoppers and visitors to complete a short digital survey on the city’s CBD to capture community perceptions on what makes an ideal city centre.
Strategic Development and Engagement Coordinator Ben Kilsby said council has engaged placemaking industry experts Place Score to assist in identifying the most important aspects of the city centre to the community and
reveal how the CBD is performing.
“Council understands the importance of the city centre to our community and has retained a long term commitment to further enhancing our CBD as a great place to live, work, visit and invest,” he said.
“It’s also acknowledged that creating great people-focussed places is not about one thing alone, it’s the range of ingredients that come together to make a place feel magnetic, accessible and enjoyable and what it takes to keep people coming back to these spaces differs from one person to the next.
“Place Score is a leading provider of place-based social research helping communities across Australia measure and share what matters most to them about their city centre. The methodology is the same wherever it is adopted, so it provides an opportunity for us to capture and compare our performance against other regional centres.”
Mr Kilsby said council staff will work alongside Place Score to undertake the assessment, including a digital survey aimed at businesses, workers, shoppers and visitors within the CBD.
“The assessment will incorporate a quick online survey and a series of on-street place observation surveys at various CBD locations conducted by the Place Score team in collaboration with the City of Mount Gambier,” he said.
“Our community will be asked how various ‘place’ attributes are performing and impact their personal enjoyment of the CBD. This includes questions about the look and function of the area, feeling welcome, the activities on offer, the unique identity our CBD presents and the care and maintenance that is provided.”
Mr Kilsby said the results of the survey will be collated into a report which will highlight what the community collectively values about the CBD and detail strengths and opportunities for improvement to guide further decision making and investments within the CBD.
“It will also provide a benchmark comparison outlining the attributes in the CBD that are performing more and less strongly than the national average and a summary of best and worst performing attributes for different demographic groups,” he said.
Mr Kilsby said the results of the survey will complement and extend on the research and studies council has undertaken in recent months regarding the way the community engages with the CBD.
“We have used internal resources and tools to assess car park availability and usage including on and off street parking, assessed average speeds and traffic volumes and audited the current commercial/residential mix and vacancy rates in our CBD,” he said.
The survey closes on November 10.
