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                    How CLUE works

                    Melbourne city skyline in the distance with trees and low-rise buildings in the foreground
                    The City of Melbourne releases the census of land use and employment data yearly.

                    ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​This data answers a range of questions, including:

                    • What are the current land uses (building types, floor space usage, business activities)?
                    • What sort of businesses and industries are located in the City of Melbourne and how fast are they growing?
                    • What are the key trends in employment, business and development and residential sector expansion?
                    • What are the changes in land use?

                    Participation is confidential and published census results do not provide specific details about individual businesses. CLUE's success depends on the participation of all businesses.

                    What does CLUE data cover?

                    CLUE data includes:

                    • industry structure and type (ANZSIC code and number of establishments or business locations)
                    • floor space type and use (office, retail, industrial, accommodation or entertainment and office vacancy rates)
                    • employment type (full-time, part-time, casual or contractor)
                    • building information (number of floors, year of construction, gross floor area and lettable area)
                    • venue and capacity measures (cafe or restaurant seats, child care centre spaces, off-street car parking spaces, bicycle and shower facilities, residential dwellings, student dwellings, student beds, theatre and stadium seats, conference and meeting seats and gaming machines)
                    • spatial distribution (maps, CLUE small areas, blocks and customised regions).

                    Frequently asked questions

                    Census of Land Use and Employment

                    How long has the City of Melbourne been doing CLUE?

                    The City of Melbourne has been collecting land use and employment data since 1962. Originally collected on a five-yearly basis, since 2000 it has been collected every two years.

                    Changes to CLUE collection over time


                    Census yearCensus areaMajor improvementsNumber of business locations
                    1962CBDfirst time – paper based
                    1982CBDcomputer database, industry classification7532
                    1992central city expansion of census area to central city ​6744
                    1997central city capacity measures included 6872
                    2000central city computer mapping, website launched 7399
                    2002municipality contractors and volunteers categories 12,134
                    2004municipality space use measurement in m squared 12,536
                    2006municipality conversion to ANZSIC 2006 13,943
                    2008municipality 15,358
                    2010municipalityoccupancy history, operating hours, accessibility of public buildings15,965
                    2012

                    municipalitybicycle/shower facilities16,335
                    ​2018
                    ​municipality
                    ​cloud-based database, digital data collection
                    ​16,768

                    How recent is the CLUE data?

                    ​The latest full dataset is CLUE 2022 – this data was collected between July 2021 and December 2022.

                    How often is CLUE conducted?

                    ​Every commercial property will be surveyed at least once every two years.​

                    When will the next CLUE information be released?

                    The City of Melbourne releases an annual update that collates data from the previous two years.

                    The next update will be released in 2024.

                    How is the data collected and what sort of information is collected?

                    A team of census officers visits every establishment in every building in the City of Melbourne. The census generally involves an officer visiting businesses during normal operating hours to ask details about their business and premises.

                    Information collected includes trading name, activity description, a space type code, number of employees, number of parking spaces and capacity measures. 

                    For further information see:

                    Can I obtain data for specific businesses or buildings?

                    ​Some data is considered confidential and therefore not released. This includes employment and floor space occupied by individual businesses. Data that is public knowledge, such as trading names, is not confidential.

                    What can I do if I can't find the information I require?

                    If you can’t find the data you require in the reports we provide, you can submit a request for a customised report.

                    What type of information can I expect if I request customised data?

                    ​Customised data is usually presented as a table in Excel format, but this can depend on the request.

                    How is the cost of customised data calculated? Will I receive a quote first?

                    ​The cost is calculated at $220 per hour, including GST. We will advise you of the exact cost before the data is produced, and will only supply the customised data once you have accepted our quote.

                    Can I have the data provided in map format?

                    No, although if you would like to map and analyse the information yourself, you can download geospatial map layers in shapefile format for CLUE small areas and blocks data.

                    You’ll need to perform a spatial join to append CLUE data attributes to these map layers. Please refer to CLUE small area and block maps.

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