Sydney Startup PlaceScore Gives Governments A 'New Census' To Plan Better Cities

Startup PlaceScore gives governments a ‘new census’ to help plan better cities for our communities.

PlaceScore is a new Sydney start up launching this month in Melbourne, Brisbane and Hobart with a unique offering for governments.

Offering two tools – Care Factor and PX Assessment - PlaceScore works as a system to conduct rigorous place experience surveys on public spaces where new development or planning is about to start.

The Care Factor tool acts as a place census by capturing what the community values about a type of place in general. A PX Assessment allows the community to rate their current experience of their main street or neighbourhood. Together they help to define local priorities so that investment can be delivered where it will have the greatest positive impact.

Oxford Street Paddington on PlaceScore.

With hundreds of millions being spent each year on projects to make our streets and neighbourhoods better for business, residents and visitors, it is not surprising that there is a demand for more rigorous decision making tools.

The company has achieved a lot in a short space of time having already engaged over 10,000 Australians in PlaceScore surveys. 2,300 of these were from the City of Parramatta alone where community members completed a Care Factor survey letting the Council know what was most important to making town centres the type of places they want to spend time and money in. Interestingly, not one neighbourhood’s top 10 was the same as the LGA average. This is a bonanza for government and community alike – finally they can differentiate community values by suburb or even by age or gender.

Another stand out feature is PlaceScore's ever-growing National Benchmarks which are helping to define wider trends in urban values. Data shows that people living in high density neighbourhoods most value ‘Connectivity’, that is, proximity to other neighbourhoods, employment centres, shops etc. However, for those living in suburban or low density neighbourhoods, their #1 Care Factor is ‘Elements of the natural environment’.

PlaceScore offers two sophisticated data collection tools to gather and analyse community insights – Care Factor and PX. Both Care Factor and PX can be applied to three environments (Neighbourhood, Street and Work Place) to gather transparent, cost effective and representative community insights.
About PlaceScore
Place Score is the world’s first dedicated Place Experience (PX) diagnostic, engagement, benchmarking and tracking tool. PlaceScore measures the quality of the human experience; considering the physical, economic, social and cultural attributes that contribute to people wanting to visit and spend time in a place.

The product is a groundbreaking place experience (PX) diagnostic, engagement, benchmarking, tracking and marketing business that establishes a benchmark for what your people care about, and allows you to find out how a particular place rates against that benchmark; its purpose is to make places better for people by providing insights that guide more effective investment.