Cessnock vs Maitland

Cessnock and Maitland are nearby regional centres in New South Wales with very different layouts. Maitland is much more accessible for people on foot, with a walkability score of 5.1 (somewhat walkable) compared to 3.6 (mostly car-dependent) in Cessnock. This is most evident in health services, where 42.5% of Maitland homes are within a 15-minute walk of care, while only 11.6% of homes in Cessnock have the same access. Maitland also has a far higher share of homes within a short walk of schools (72.8%) and groceries (47.1%) than Cessnock, where these figures are 51.6% and 24.5% respectively.

Both areas have a similar number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and nearly identical First Nations unemployment rates, around 10%. These shared social patterns persist while the gap in their urban design has widened since 2011. For example, Maitland has seen its walkability score move well higher than that of Cessnock over the last decade.