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Dunedin's strengths, as well as the challenges ahead, are at the heart of any discussion about the city's future.

To ensure Dunedin remains a prosperous, vibrant and supportive community, residents need to have a vision for the city and ways of measuring how the vision is being delivered.

This State of the City report - a new initiative - provides a progress report on how well we are doing in the areas that citizens have indicated are important to them.

The city has already endorsed seven community outcome areas. They are Wealthy Community, Accessible City, Safe and Healthy People, Sustainable City and Environment, Culture and Learning, Supportive Community and Active City.

Within each outcome area, there are objectives. There are also indicators to show what, and how well, we are doing to meet those objectives. For example, we want to be a city that encourages strong business and employment growth, attracts new businesses and tourists, provides opportunities for recreation and leisure and where people can enjoy a safe and healthy life.

Ways of doing this range from providing advice and funding to specific business sectors through the Council's Economic Development Unit, property investment and the planned Dunedin Centre Redevelopment and work with other stakeholders to implement strategies such as the Visitor Strategy and the Heritage Strategy or on specific projects such as the Otago Settlers Museum Redevelopment.

Whether it is through the provision of water, footpaths, streetlighting, libraries, museums or festivals, it is the Council's responsibility to maintain the assets and activities which underpin the life of Dunedin residents. However, as this report shows, the best results are achieved when all sectors of the community work together.

In preparing this report, the Council gathered a wide range of data from a variety of sources, such as Statistics New Zealand, the Ministry of Health and the Council's own annual Residents' Opinion Surveys. The Council also relied significantly on a research project called the Quality of Life Report, which reports regularly on social, economic, cultural and physical wellbeing in 12 New Zealand cities.

A new Quality of Life Report is due out in March, but unfortunately the latest information was not available before this State of the City report was published.

Staff and Councillors see the information contained in this report as providing a clear picture of the city's goals and what more the community can do together to fully achieve them.