Boroondara Neighbourhood Character Study Goes Online

A big problem with large scale planning and design projects is the need to get feedback from hundreds if not thousands of people at once. Boroondara, one of the largest inner municipalities, is updating its Neighbourhood Character profiles and has decided to embrace the power of web-based data gathering for feedback on the draft Precinct Profiles.

This kind of questionnaire is a great way to get fast feedback from a wide range of people in a format that is easily analysed and synthesized. It also allows Boroondara to attract people who may not usually be able to make it to after-hours community sessions, or simply may not be concerned enough to want to devote too much time to such things.

It's a concept that's being implemented more rapidly in other countries, yet is only an emerging idea here.

You can check out the website and questionnaire here, and if you're a resident - I encourage you to read your draft profile and give some feedback! Naturally, you can still give feedback the 'old school' way, via a pdf download and snail-mail, or requesting a hard copy over the phone!


In the interest of full disclosure, this is a City of Boorondara project that David Lock Associates is working on, with Harvest Digital Planning working among other things on the online tools, and in collaboration with Collaborations. That's probably why it's so awesome.