Project Description
CoBuild: Enabling Better Community Housing and Infrastructure Planning
A smarter way to plan Victoria’s growth – keeping neighbourhoods liveable, inclusive, and connected.
The Challenge
Victoria is growing faster than our infrastructure can keep up. Every housing approval brings opportunity, but also risk:
- Overcrowded schools
- Congested roads and transport networks
- Rising rents and housing stress
- Strained community services
Right now, housing approvals are often made *without a full picture** of how they affect schools, transport, and community wellbeing. The result? Pressure on residents, councils, and governments that could have been predicted and prevented.*
User Persona
1. Council Urban Planner
Profile: Works in a local government planning department.
Goals: Ensure sustainable growth, balance housing approvals with schools, transport, and services.
Pain Points: Data is siloed, decisions reactive, limited tools for forecasting community impact.
How CoBuild Helps: Provides forecasts, visual maps, and resource capacity indicators so they can approve or decline projects with evidence.
2. Community Resident
Profile: Homeowner or renter concerned about livability of their suburb.
Goals: Affordable housing, good schools, less congestion, quality community services.
Pain Points: Feels left out of planning, lacks voice in big decisions, fears overdevelopment.
How CoBuild Helps: Can give anonymous feedback, see sentiment scores, and track how planned projects might affect their area.
3. Property Developer / Investor
Profile: Builder, developer, or investor wanting to know project feasibility.
Goals: Understand whether a housing project will be supported by infrastructure and community sentiment.
Pain Points: Risk of community backlash, project delays, hidden infrastructure shortages.
How CoBuild Helps: Runs simulations (“add 200 houses → see needed schools/transport”) and generates feasibility reports with data + sentiment.
4. State Government Policy Maker
Profile: Works at a state or federal agency overseeing housing, infrastructure, and sustainability.
Goals: Long-term planning, balanced growth, reduce urban strain.
Pain Points: Limited ability to aggregate local data, difficulty prioritizing funding allocations.
How CoBuild Helps: Provides big-picture regional forecasts, identifies high-risk areas early, integrates community voice into policy decisions.
5. Community Advocate / NGO
Profile: Works with local community groups, NGOs, or social services.
Goals: Ensure vulnerable communities have access to affordable housing, transport, and services.
Pain Points: Lack of transparent data, difficult to argue with councils/developers.
How CoBuild Helps: Offers clear visualizations, word clouds of major community concerns, and data-backed advocacy material.
Our Solution: CoBuild
A centralised, data-driven dashboard that combines housing, transport, schools, and community services into one clear view.
Key Features:
- Crystal Ball Forecasting → Anticipates where pressure will build before it happens.
- RYG Indicators → Simple, visual signals: Green = safe, Yellow = caution, Red = critical.
- Community Voice → AI-powered sentiment analysis + resident feedback loop.
- Equity Lens → Spotlights vulnerable communities most at risk of being left behind.
How It Works
- See today’s reality → Housing costs, school crowding, bus frequency, community services, and what residents are saying through sentiment analysis.
- Forecast tomorrow → “Your suburb will add 300 homes → +50 students → transport at 90% load → rising concern about school access.”
- Act early → Councils, residents, and planners get alerts before crisis hits, backed by both hard data and community voice.
Why It Matters
- For Residents: Clear picture of how neighbourhood changes affect daily life.
- For Councils: Tools to plan roads, schools, and services before the pressure.
- For State Government: Holistic data for smarter policy.
- For Developers: Build with transparency and community trust.
---
Case Study Example
“500 new homes approved in Brunswick → School capacity hits red, transport at 95%, childcare full within 2 years.”
CoBuild flags this before approvals, giving decision-makers time to adapt—expanding capacity, adding bus routes, or rethinking approvals.
Technical Overview
Frontend: React.js and React Bootstrap are used to create a clean, responsive user interface.
Mapping: Leaflet.js and heatmaps are implemented to visualise transport networks, housing density, and service coverage.
Backend: Python with Flask or FastAPI powers the API endpoints and AI-driven analysis.
Data Processing: Pandas and NumPy are used for dataset cleaning and aggregation.
AI & Sentiment Analysis: The OpenAI API is integrated for summarisation and feedback clustering.
Visualisation: Red-Yellow-Green (RYG) metrics are displayed using Leaflet heat layers and progress bars.
Hosting: The frontend is hosted on GitHub Pages
Open Source: The full source code is available on GitHub.
What’s Next for CoBuild?
Pilot Partnerships
We plan to launch pilot partnerships with councils and state agencies, making CoBuild a living tool that delivers smarter, fairer planning outcomes.
Scaling Up
We aim to scale from single suburbs to entire states, integrating housing, transport, schools, and community sentiment into one unified platform.
Future Innovation
We plan to add real-time data feeds, AI-driven forecasts, and API integrations, enabling councils, developers, and governments worldwide to co-plan sustainable communities.
The Vision
CoBuild empowers Victoria to grow sustainably, fairly, and intelligently—so every new street, school, and home strengthens the fabric of our communities.
Let’s make growth future-ready. Together.
Join Us in Building Future-Ready Communities
Let’s make Victoria’s growth sustainable, fair, and community-driven.
