BestSuburbs › Methodology

How we rank suburbs

Every score on this site comes from public data, computed the same way for every suburb in a city. No survey, no editorial opinion, no paid placement. This page states exactly what goes in.

The ten signals

SafetyRecorded criminal offences per 1,000 residents, from the city's official crime statistics agency, converted to a 0–100 percentile against every other suburb in the same city.
ActivityDensity of public GPS-activity traces (OpenStreetMap, ODbL) — the same signal behind the "Strava heatmap" trick, but blended with the signals below rather than used alone.
Wealth & ValueMedian household income vs median rent (ABS Census 2021). Value is left unscored where a suburb's rental market is too thin to trust.
Parks & Green spaceOpenStreetMap park polygons — hectares per 1,000 residents and share of the suburb within walking distance of a park.
Cafés & TransitOpenStreetMap points of interest — density per resident and per km², so a big suburb cannot outrank a small one purely on raw counts.
Parkrun & Healthy/activeDistance to the nearest parkrun event, plus gym/sports-facility density per resident.

Crime data source, by city

MelbourneCrime Statistics Agency Victoria
SydneyNSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR)
BrisbaneQueensland Police Service
AdelaideSouth Australia Police (SAPOL)

Known limitations

We do not hold school catchments, so any "for families" ranking excludes them — every families page says so explicitly. Queensland publishes crime data only at police-division level, not per suburb, so Brisbane-area suburbs in the same division share a figure. ABS Census 2021 gives us population, age, income and rent per suburb — not renter/owner split, family composition or birthplace. Suburbs under roughly 1,500 residents are excluded from scoring as too small to trust statistically.

Frequently asked questions

What data goes into a suburb's scores?

Up to ten 0–100 percentile scores per suburb: safety (official crime statistics), activity (open GPS-activity traces), wealth and value (ABS census household income vs rent), parks and green space (OpenStreetMap park polygons), cafés and transit (OpenStreetMap points of interest), parkrun proximity, and a healthy/active composite. A score is left blank rather than guessed at when the underlying data is too thin to trust for that suburb.

Where does the crime data come from?

Each city's own police or justice statistics agency — see the per-city table below. Every figure is recorded offences per 1,000 residents, latest published period. Where a state (Queensland) publishes only police-division data, not suburb-level, that is stated on every affected suburb page.

Where does the census data come from?

ABS Census 2021, at the suburb (SAL) level, for population, median age, median household income and median weekly rent. We do not hold renter/owner split, family composition or birthplace data for any suburb — those fields are not in our census data, and we say so on every suburb page rather than omitting them silently.

How often is this updated?

The site is rebuilt and redeployed as new source data becomes available; each page states its own last-updated date. Census figures are fixed to the 2021 ABS Census until the next release.

Is this ranking sponsored?

No. No suburb, agent or developer can pay for placement, and none has. The formula and inputs are published on this page and reproduced on every city and suburb page.

Updated September 2026 (last updated 2026-09-03). ← back to BestSuburbs