Rating shows Auckland has picked up its act

Len Brown. Photo / Supplied

Auckland Mayor Len Brown has developed a scorecard for the city, which shows an overall lift of 2.4 per cent in the first year of the Super City.

Progress has been made in cleaning up graffiti, public transport, adult employment and income, but the country's economic powerhouse has slipped back on exports, gross domestic product per capita and housing affordability.

Mr Brown will release the results of the first annual Auckland scorecard to the Trans-Tasman Business Circle today across four categories - communities, transport, economic and the environment - covering 19 measures.

Twelve of the 19 measures show a rise and seven a drop.

The card relates to council issues such as public transport, graffiti, water and air quality; broader national issues such as education, employment, exports, gross domestic product; and areas where local and national government overlap, such as housing, crime and visitor guest nights.

Last night, Mr Brown said he devised the scorecard to measure progress for his vision to make Auckland the world's most liveable city. "I see it as a way of making some judgments about how the city is doing."

Auckland already rated highly on a number of international measures, he said, including being fourth equal in the Mercer Quality of Living Survey, the 10th most liveable city as rated by the Economist and 13th on the Monocole magazine Most Liveable Cities Index.

Mr Brown was pleased that the first scorecard showed the index had lifted by 2.4 percentage points from a base index of 100 since the creation of the Super City 12 months ago.

Some measures, such as an increase in public transport use, have been well flagged. Others were less known.

Mr Brown cited a 5.37 per cent lift in employment but said at the other end youth unemployment among 15- to 19-year-olds was up 3 per cent.

A drop in housing affordability was reflected in a housing shortage, not enough new homes being built and people not borrowing through the recession, he said.

Asked if the scorecard was a measure of his performance as mayor, Mr Brown said it was an opportunity to assess how he was going as leader.