Place Forecast Update #19: Change

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
— W. Edwards Deming

While usually a big fan of Mr Deming, in this instance, we disagree. Change is necessary. Here’s our take on it.

We've updated Place Forecast with a new Measure control: every population and dwelling chart can now show the change over time, not just the total.

Until now, a chart answered one question: how many people (or dwellings) are there each year? That is the right question most of the time. But planning often turns on a different one: how fast is a place growing or shrinking, and over which years? The new Measure control sits in the control bar at the top of the page, next to Filter, and switches a chart and its table between Total and Change with a single click. Everything on the page follows together: the main chart, the category breakdown, and the data table all move as one.

Annual population growth rate of Hobsons Bay (see it in the forecast here).

When you choose Change, you pick what the change is measured over. Every year shows the one-year change into each year, so you can see where growth speeds up or stalls. Custom periods let you measure across spans you set yourself: drag a slider to mark 2026 to 2031, add as many periods as you like, or reach for the quick buttons (Every 5, Every 10, Full period). The chart draws one bar per period and the table gains a column for each, so the numbers on screen always match the picture.

The Measure control opens in the control bar and shows the Total and Change options.

You can also choose how the change is expressed. Leave it as a plain count (this many more or less people, this many more or less dwellings), or switch to a growth rate: the steady yearly percentage that would produce the same total change. The count tells you the size of the shift; the rate tells you the pace, and it lets you hold a small area's growth up against a large one on the same footing.

Left: Total population change in 10-year periods for Hobsons Bay (see it in the forecast here). Right: Population change in 10-year periods, broken down by age groups for Hobsons Bay (see it in the forecast here).

On the comparison pages, where you are looking at every small area at once, Change draws each area as a line across your chosen periods. In one view, you can see which parts of the LGA are pulling the total up and which are easing it down.

Population change comparison of all small areas of Hobsons Bay (see it in the forecast here).

The Measure control is on every key indicator (population, dwellings, and average household size) and on most of the component pages too: births, deaths, and migration; the dwelling breakdowns of occupancy, privacy, and structure; and the rate pages such as fertility and mortality. Reply to this email to book a demo, and we will walk you through it on your own forecast.

Explore the new feature in one of the publicly available forecasts here or check out the details in the user documentation here.

Want to see it in action? Reply to this email to book a walkthrough.

A warm welcome to Alexandrina Council in South Australia, who came on board this month. We are really glad to have you, and we are looking forward to building your forecast together.

You may have noticed that every chart in this update, and in many of our previous ones, comes from Hobsons Bay. There is a reason for that. Hobsons Bay was the very first forecast we ever built, back when it was a test forecast to prove the whole idea would work, and to this day it is the one we run all our quality checks against. We have come to know its suburbs and small areas well over the years, and we have grown quietly fond of the place.

So we were really happy when Hobsons Bay Council chose to go public with their forecast. Anyone can now explore it without logging in: the Hobsons Bay forecast, the new Measure control included.

Andrew and Bernd from Place Info

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