The importance of integrated monitoring
Monitoring is essential for understanding how urban environments are changing, and assessing how well a council is managing urban amenity. Urban amenity monitoring must also integrate with the monitoring already being done, and contribute to a council’s wider monitoring strategy.
A problem within councils is the ad-hoc approach to reporting on monitoring. Many councils report on monitoring in a comprehensive, integrated way. This can cause a scattered approach, and a duplication of monitoring work.
The lack of a national set of urban amenity indicators can appear to make integrated monitoring more difficult. However, the Urban Amenity Project found that developing a national set isn’t practical, as definitions of urban amenity vary so much among communities.
More work remains to be done on how to encourage and assist integrated monitoring. The following suggestions are an excellent place to start.
- Be proactive, not reactive. First define urban amenity, and then decide what issues you need to monitor. Many councils only monitor in response to complaints, or just monitor plan provisions. Both of these approaches are too narrow.
- Always ask what other monitoring programmes in council your indicators could contribute to.
- Present your monitoring results in one comprehensive report, rather than in separate reports. Creating one comprehensive report enables you to establish links among the different monitoring results. It also enables you to see where you may be duplicating some forms of monitoring.
- Report to and work with other sections of council that are undertaking different types of monitoring. Aim at producing one strategic report that draws together all the monitoring being done in council.
- If possible, involve all council staff in creating a monitoring strategy.
- Use support and assistance from Regional Councils. State of the environment reports, for example, can provide useful monitoring information. A region-wide strategy may be useful to monitor and report on some issues. The aim is always to use time and resources most effectively.
Technical paper 22: City and district council state of the environment monitoring and indicators [PDF 302kb]
