Perceptions of Liveability and Sense of Community in Five Different Neighbourhoods in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, New Zealand

Priscila Besen¹, Andrew Burgess¹, Stacy Vallis¹, Stefan Marks¹, Riana Horne¹, Abby Geddes¹, James Pearson¹, Jyllian Cruz¹, Devarsh Patel¹, Kyle Paala¹

1. Auckland University of Technology

Published in Proceedings of the International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environment (SASBE 2024), edited by Ali GhaffarianHoseini, Amirhosein GhaffarianHoseini, Farzad Rahimian and Mahesh Babu Purushothaman. Springer Nature, Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, volume 591, 2025, pages 1280 to 1289. DOI 10.1007/978-981-96-4051-5_123.

Abstract

The way buildings and neighbourhoods are designed, built and maintained can influence people’s lifestyles, social interactions and overall quality of life. Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland has diverse urban and suburban environments that have been going through significant transformation in recent years, especially due to the need to build additional housing through densification. Post-occupancy evaluation is rarely applied in Aotearoa New Zealand’s buildings, and even less frequently at the neighbourhood scale. Existing literature has assessed liveability in specific neighbourhoods in New Zealand, with limited ability to make comparisons between different areas due to a lack of available data. Architects, urban designers and planners often make assumptions about design strategies to create medium-density walkable, liveable and well-connected communities, but there are few feedback loops to understand how these perform in practice in each location and how these built environments are perceived by residents. The aim of this paper is to fill these gaps in knowledge by assessing liveability in five different neighbourhoods in North, South, East, West and Central Auckland, through mapping and an online survey with residents. Although there were different perceptions of liveability on various aspects being assessed, the overall results demonstrated higher levels of perceived liveability in the following order: Mount Eden (1st), Saint Heliers (2nd), Northcote (3rd), Takanini (4th), Massey (5th). This study explores potential inequities in current densification strategies and it provides insights to help create more evidence-based policies and design practices for socially sustainable and well-connected future neighbourhoods.

Keywords

Session

Presented in Recorded Presentations, Session I, Friday 8 November 2024, 11:00 to 13:30, room WG 201, Auckland University of Technology. Session chair Dr Megan Burfoot.

How to Cite

Besen, P., Burgess, A., Vallis, S., Marks, S., Horne, R., Geddes, A., Pearson, J., Cruz, J., Patel, D., & Paala, K. (2025). Perceptions of Liveability and Sense of Community in Five Different Neighbourhoods in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, New Zealand. In A. GhaffarianHoseini, A. GhaffarianHoseini, F. Rahimian, & M. B. Purushothaman (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environment (SASBE 2024) (Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, Vol. 591, pp. 1280–1289). Springer Nature Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-96-4051-5_123

About the Conference

Presented at SASBE 2024, the International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environment, held in Auckland from 7 to 9 November 2024 and chaired by Professors Ali and Amirhosein GhaffarianHoseini, founders of GDI Academy. The version of record is published by Springer Nature; this page is the conference archive record kept by GDI Academy.