Project background
The Ministry for the Environment established the Urban Amenity Project in 1999, as part of the Ministry’s work on Environmental Performance Indicators. The Ministry hoped to develop a standard set of national urban amenity indicators—ways to measure changes in urban amenity over time.
However, ‘urban amenity’ means different things in different communities. For this reason, developing a standard set of national indicators wasn’t possible. The Project changed its focus, and began to investigate how councils can work with urban amenity at the local, rather than national, level.
The Project developed processes and techniques for councils to use when they:
- Define urban amenity: learn what urban amenity means to the local community
- Manage urban amenity: choose the methods to maintain and enhance urban amenity
- Monitor urban amenity: choose the right indicators to measure changes in local urban amenity
- Review urban amenity: review the results of the monitoring, and make whatever changes are needed.
The Project’s work resulted in a ten-step framework for defining, managing, and monitoring urban amenity. This framework forms the basis of the Ministry for the Environment’s guide, Creating great places to live, work, play.
Studies, trials, and focus group workshops
