Community infrastructure plays an important role in our lives. From sporting ovals to health facilities to schools to libraries – chances are you use different community infrastructure and services daily.
Recognising the positive influence that well-planned community infrastructure can have on well-being, the Rural City of Murray Bridge wanted to understand how it could best support community life via community infrastructure.
In contributing to the Community Infrastructure Model, URPS took a wide view of anticipated demand for community infrastructure.
What shone through early in the investigations was that the traditional approach to reviewing community infrastructure would not work well here. The use of standardised benchmarking ignored the specific characteristics of regional cities such as Murray Bridge.
The result is a move beyond an audit/stocktake of existing infrastructure to establish a unique hierarchy of provision for Murray Bridge.
We are excited by the transferability of this methodology, particularly in regional centres/townships that experience high demand for infrastructure and services from a wide catchment.