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Social infrastructure requires a consistent and measurable definition and more evidence is needed to demonstrate why it is important to health, wellbeing and the liveability of a community. In this paper, social infrastructure is defined as life-long social service needs related to health, education, early childhood, community support, community development, culture, sport and recreation, parks and emergency services. These services are needed to promote health and wellbeing and underinvestment and poor planning of social infrastructure has been linked to area-based health inequities. Current methods used to plan infrastructure delivery in communities were analysed and a new conceptual framework of social infrastructure developed and empirically tested using geocoded health survey data linked to spatial social infrastructure measures. Both accessibility and mix of social infrastructure were associated with higher Subjective Wellbeing. Residents were most likely to have close access to childcare services, dentists, doctors and sport facilities and least likely to have access to services of culture and leisure including cinemas, theatres, libraries, museums and art galleries. Results provide evidence of direct associations between social infrastructure planning and public health, the need for alternative social infrastructure urban planning methods and policies, and areas for future research.

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Background Designing healthy, liveable cities is a global priority. Current liveability indices are aggregated at the city-level, do not reflect spatial variation within cities, and are often not aligned to policy or health. Objectives To combine policy-relevant liveability indicators associated with health into a spatial Urban Liveability Index (ULI) and examine its association with adult travel behaviours. Methods We developed methods to calculate spatial liveability indicators and the ULI for all residential addresses in Melbourne, Australia. Associations between the address-level ULI and adult travel behaviours from the 2012–2014 Victorian Integrated Survey of Travel and Activity (VISTA) ( n = 12,323) were analysed using multilevel logistic regression. Sensitivity analyses to evaluate impact of methodological choices on distribution of liveability as assessed by the ULI and associations with travel mode choice were also conducted. Results Liveability estimates were calculated for 1,550,641 residential addresses. ULI scores were positively associated with active transport behaviour: for each unit increase in the ULI score the estimated adjusted odds ratio (OR) for: walking increased by 12% (95% Credible Interval: 9%, 15%); cycling increased by 10% (4%, 17%); public transport increased by 15% (11%, 19%); and private vehicle transport decreased by 12% (− 9%, − 15%). Conclusions The ULI provides an evidence-informed and policy-relevant measure of urban liveability, that is significantly and approximately linearly associated with adult travel behaviours in the Melbourne context. The ULI can be used to evaluate progress towards implementing policies designed to achieve more liveable cities, identify spatial inequities, and examine relationships with health and wellbeing. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12942-019-0178-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.