In this article, we discuss the recently published study, Creating Great Australian Cities[i] , commissioned by The Property Council of Australia.
Australian cities benchmark
When comparing major Australian cities to the world’s top 100, what would you say Australia’s overall average position is? If you guessed that on average Australia would figure amongst the top 20 or 30, you should think again, our average position is 40th.
There is a general misconception of the position of Australia’s cities occupy in global ranks. Australia tends to perform better in rankings that take into account the respondents’ perception than in benchmarks measuring performance only, as can be seen in Table 1.
This dissonance between perception and performance is much more significant for Australian cities than observed for the benchmark cities in Canada, Japan and the USA.
Table 1: Benchmarks containing performance indicators only in comparison to perception measures
| City | Position across all benchmarks containing a perception component | Position across all benchmarks measuring performance only |
| Sydney | 10th | 15th |
| Melbourne | 14th | 23rd |
| Brisbane | 32nd | 43rd |
| Adelaide | 40th | 58th |
| Perth | 42nd | 61st |
Australian cities strengths and weaknesses
The key strengths and weaknesses of Australia’s major cities (Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney) in comparison to other major cities are highlighted next.
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