Canberra…liveable, lovable and leading the way in wellbeing

Posted on 26 June, 2014

June has been a big month for Canberra.

It started when Hotel Hotel was awarded Best Boutique City Hotel at Gourmet Traveller’s inaugural Australian Hotel Guide Awards (with East Hotel and the Diamant Hotel Canberra also included in the top 50 hotels in Australia).

It continued with Gourmet Traveller penning an eleven-page tribute to Canberra over eleven glorious pages, with the cover asking whether our home was ‘Australia’s coolest capital’.

Then the big guns got in on the act, with The New York Times taking its readers on its 36 hour journey around the Capital region, praising its “big-sky beauty, breezy civic pride and…decidedly hipster underbelly.”

And today? Well, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Regional Well-Being Report 2014 reveals we lead the nation (and the rest of the OECD’s regions) for wellbeing. And we romped it in, as the only city in the 362 regions to score 9 out of 10 or more in each category, leading the way in six of the eight areas: education, employment, disposable income, safety, healthcare and accessibility to services.

While we’ve got some work to do in ‘environment’ (maybe due to all those heaters being cranked up through our long winter), it’s a pretty good report card.

But this only confirms what those of us who live here already know. We’re a healthy city with so much going for it. And we’re not only liveable, we’re loveable…

As Catherine Russell wrote last year:

“We can’t deny it, Canberra bashing is rife in other capital cities throughout Australia but comparatively we have what so many urban centres are trying to retrofit.

We know that what makes Canberra lovable that it allows us all to do simple things with ease and that a sense of community is natural inclination of our culture.

We are not a show off kind of city, always lauding the next big thing like Sydney.

We are not a place that trades on our quirkiness to the point of alienating people who aren’t ‘hip’ enough like Melbourne.

We have distinct seasons unlike Brisbane or Darwin.

We are not a mystery bag like Adelaide, or steeped in convict history like Hobart.

We are not a place the rises and falls on the fortunes of the mining boom like Perth.

We are Canberra – a considered city, an understated city with an important job to do where the value of our place is subtle and somewhat underappreciated by those who don’t live here.

A city of people that enjoys the simplicity of how LBG (Lake Burley Griffin) looks on a morning walk (while lamenting its algae problem); that relishes the seasons like the chill of winter as an opportunity to cook, read and be by a fire, that gathers at art galleries, Parliament, parks and markets to talk about life and politics; a place where you are more likely to know the person next to you or have a reason to know them, a place where debate is encouraged and expression cherished…”

Do you agree with the OECD’s findings? What do you love most about living in Canberra? What do you think we could do better?