CityFutures were commissioned by the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) to conduct ‘first-cut' analysis on the 2006 Australian Bureau of Statistic's Census; the funding secured the purchase of pre-release data sets at the suburb level for the entirety of the Sydney metropolitan area. The research and analysis was provided in kind by CityFutures with the data being supplied to the team by way of payment.
The main purposes behind the commission was to provide the SMH with both tabulated and mapped output and also running commentary on key stories emerging from the analysis. The analysis also considered population change between 2001 and 2006 and made use of the suburb level geography, analysis had not been conducted at this spatial level before.
During the analysis and writing up process it was identified that a standalone publication could be developed, and after discussion with the SMH it was agreed that CityFutures could continue with this strategy. The background analysis work and subsequent commentary was taken forward as a research paper (number 8 in the series) named “Our Changing city, Sydney : a Census overview 2001-2006” (ISBN: 978-1-7404-4067-7 ) and made available through the CityFuture's web site.
The document's release was circulated via the RePlan mailing list and also referred to in a SMH article. As well as generating the Research Paper this project has also served to raise the media profile of CityFutures.