Black Friday Launches Digital Mainstreet

As of the 13th April 2012 this blog is retired and replaced with my most current thoughts and musings being published on www.digitalmainstreet.com.au

Digital Mainstreet is where the burning issues and the tormented optimistic passion will still be revealed...the one thing that I will never give up on is that local communities deserve the best information to make informed choices for their future and the future of their children.

Make sure you visit http://digitalmainstreet.com.au to see what I am up to!

Regards and Best Wishes

Robert

Governance Vital for Smart Infrastructure

As the critical issues of managing the increasing environmental, social and economic impacts of growth and the aging of our population scream for action, we now are undeniably at a crossroad for better decision making particularly in how we invest in the future of our communities..

Are we going to set the right framework to help us secure our preferred future?

Will we make the best choices in how we shape our communities?

2010 Tipping Point

Vital Places current work across regional council areas in Queensland, points to 2010 being the 'silent' tipping point for the winners and losers of local identity and lifestyle in regional communities.

The tipping point is being set by a convergence legislation that will impact directly on every local community's futures. Currently in the pipeline for Queensland Local Government in 2010 you are going to hear about and/or be consulted on issues regarding:

• New Local Govt Act
• Sustainable Planning Act
• 10 year Community Planning
• 10 year Financial Strategy
• 10 year Asset Management Plan
• Reviews of current Corporate Plans to ensure alignment with outcomes of above

Also, 2010 will see the beginnings of Regional Development Authorities in Australia as a new vehicle for direct funding from the Federal Government to Local Government for significant infrastructure projects that support future growth of the regions.

On top of this are the bigger issues of population growth, climate change, coastal impacts of rising sea levels, carbon reduction, increasing energy costs and water security.With all these activities comes community consultation, workshops, meetings, surveys, and quite possibly complete confusion!

Generational Opportunity

2010 will be when most Queensland local community visions will be defined and action plans put in place. Partnerships and collaborations will be identified and leadership tested. It is shaping up to be a  "once in a generation opportunity" for communities to help shape the priorities and outcomes at the local level ...if we are not workshopped to death in the process!

How are we going to deliver our preferred future?...definitely not by continuing the past!

The word you are going to hear a lot more of in 2010 and coming years is "Resilience". Resilience is,

"the ability to withstand the impact of unpredictable change."

Resilience is achieved through diversity and integration. Communities need a network of diverse activities, skills and infrastructure that is well connected and allows the greatest opportunity for growth when things suddenly change. Putting all your eggs in one basket such as one industry or one unique local attribute will ensure you don’t have a future.

We need to create resilient regions that nurture their many communities. Ensuring there are networks of diverse activities, skills and infrastructure will allow the greatest opportunity for growth in a world where change is more unpredictable than it has ever been.

Beware Lazy Governance

More is no longer better. The lazy approach to managing growth in a limitless world is finished. Appreciation and nurturing of difference will be the secret to success in the 21^st century and this requires an intellectual rigor at the grassroots of governance that has to date been avoided.

This means what ever strategies or plans our governments present as a way forward, unless there are clear, innovative approaches to deliver sustainable outcomes at the local scale, you know your community and your children will lose.

The evidence is now so clear and mounting daily, regarding the declining resilience of our planet, that there are the beginnings of a noticeable shift from local complacency to concern for our kid's futures...and our old age.

We now understand how unpredictable the future can be on a planet with growing population and finite resources. The increasing cost of water, fuel and electricity is reshaping the way we live our lives and our expectations of the future in a world of declining environmental diversity and climatic change.

It is clear the decisions we are making now will determine quality of all our lives in the coming decades.

For Governance, how we make and implement decisions, it is a time of transformation rather than tinkering with old ways.

Good Growth

The question is, how can we guide the inevitable change in a way that strengthens our community? How can we keep the best parts of local identity and lifestyle and secure a sustainable future especially for our children?

The solution lies in understanding three key areas affecting our lives. 

We need to understand:

• the external forces shaping our lives that we can't control
• the unique attributes and opportunities of the where we live
• the common aspirations for our future.

Then we need to provide clarity, establish a decision making framework that retains the critical issues and helps us debate our best options to move forward. The blending of these three areas into a robust and focused context for community engagement and direction setting will give communities their best chance to not only survive but thrive in the future.

There has never been a more relevant time for Albert Einstein's immortal words,

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."

The challenge we face is complex, interconnected and unpredictable. It deserves a committed approach from our governance processes to identifying the best way forward rather than denial or simplistic recipes that miss the mark.

Set up to Fail?

There will be winners, those who embrace change that strengthens them and losers, those that resist change and tinker at the edges. The challenge for 2010 is to make sure your community isn't one of the losers!

The secret is to deliver resilience through good growth - change that strengthens the community. Good Growth is built upon a wise investment in smart infrastructure.

The easiest way to see if you are being sold a lemon is to understand the trends for your locality, what you really value and want to keep for the future and ask,

1. "How will our actions deliver our preferred future?"
2. "What are the new processes being applied to deliver these new outcomes?"
3. "How are we encouraging innovation and diversity to strengthen our resilience?"

If there is not a dramatically new approach and you can't get satisfactory answers to the above questions then...you know your community’s days are numbered!

Don't let 2010 slip under the radar!

Be engaged. Ask questions. Debate the issues...

...Remember there is nothing more powerful than a well informed community!

Catalyst Infrastructure Provides Good Growth Option for Local Government

As you may have already gathered, Local Government and in particular Regional Councils are a real interest to me with regard to how they are shaping or are not shaping places to grow stronger communities. In our multi-level governance structure the real capacity to deliver the benefits of growth in a sustainable way is at the local level. The scale I call "my place my vote"… the pointy end of the governance stick!

Investing the Benefits of Growth

There is a growing community realisation that the rewards of growth are in fact reducing our quality of life. There seems an inability to transfer the benefits of growth evenly across the broader community. In particular, it appears the non-urban areas aren't getting their share of the current economic prosperity. The unfortunate truth is we are not making smart investments to secure the future vitality of our communities at a time when there is money to do so…and this could be the worst legacy we could leave future generations!

Dumb Infrastructure

This lack of strategic investment is most apparent in the old world thinking we are bringing towards delivering infrastructure. In an age of global warming, increasing energy costs, peak oil impacts, aging populations, skill shortages, the Internet and food security we wonder why building transport corridors, freight lines, gas powered power stations, coal ports etc. isn't seen by communities as enough to secure their future.

On one hand we can have Government infrastructure expenditure at record highs yet the identity, quality of life and sustainability of our towns and communities are still going backwards. With the continued impacts of construction cost escalation and our inability to challenge old management models we are moving towards Dumb & Dumber Infrastructure. We continue to deliver projects that at the regional scale make sense but at the local scale seem disconnected from the real issues of community life.

It’s time to Get Smart with Infrastructure

Clearly, we need to be smarter with how we approach infrastructure investment in our towns and communities. We need to bring new thinking to how we prioritise and deliver critical infrastructure that shapes the places we live in. We need to local-ise infrastructure to grow stronger communities and the agency to do this is Local Government.

Communities Need Local Government to Show the Way

Local Government must step up to guide growth that strengthens communities. At the Local Government scale every place is important and everyone needs a place in the future. Regional, State and National priorities don’t cut it at the local government scale… and they aren't meant to! That is the role of Local Government.

If Local Government fails to find the framework to promote growth that protects local lifestyle and identity then as a community we all loose, which makes the larger scale economic prosperity of Region, State and Nation meaningless.

The Our Town Our Future commissioned by Hinchinbrook Shire Council has been recognised by its 7th Major Award as a project where local government has stepped up to guide good growth for it’s community. This project is providing a template for what will be needed to local-ise infrastructure investment to build stronger communities.

Regional Planning Removes Local Identity

Another reason Local Government and in particular Regional Councils need to step up to the task of local-ising infrastructure is that there is a major blind spot in our current Regional Planning Process. It is accentuated in Queensland due to distance and population. Our current Regional planning process has a growth focus that fails the needs of towns and communities outside the regional growth centres particularly those communities on the fringe within the 2 hour drive.

Stimulate Growth as well as Manage Growth

Most towns and communities outside urban centres need growth stimulation rather than growth management. They need Smart Infrastructure investment that attracts the change that will enhance their social and economic sustainability and effectively reduce their long term social and economic liabilities.

This is exactly the issues that the NQ3 Enterprise Strategy is attempting to address as it is becoming clearer that the current process is not working for the broader community benefit.

What is Smart Infrastructure?

Smart infrastructure practice is based around an understanding of the three key infrastructures of Service, Growth and Catalyst infrastructure. Service Infrastructure provides the base line to community quality of life expectations. It is infrastructure that is a political given to ensure common standard of living. Growth Infrastructure responds to growth needs. Its purpose is to avoid unnecessary constrictions to existing growth. Catalyst Infrastructure is an upfront investment to stimulate growth that will strengthen the community.

Smart Infrastructure is how you combine Service, Growth and Catalyst Infrastructure to strengthen local identity and lifestyle AND build stronger regions. In townships and communities that are missing out on the benefits of regional growth, smart infrastructure provides a catalyst for good local growth.

There are various definitions around about the role of smart Infrastructure within regions. But we don’t live in regions we live in places. From a place sustaining point of view the most powerful definition relates to what should happen at the local scale.

Infrastructure that is going to be good for local places within a growing region should be infrastructure that:

1. Provides leadership
2. Reduces investment risk
3. Strengthens access to learning
4. Celebrates local identity and lifestyle
5. Promotes innovation & creative thinking
6. Reinvigorates business thinking and practice
7. Creates attractive places for knowledge workers
8. Promotes connections through networks & clusters
9. Nurtures growth through enterprise that delivers local jobs
10. Unifies the community through a shared vision of the future

So next time you review an Infrastructure Priority List see how much old world thinking persists and how much of the above are acknowledged outcomes of the billion budgets.

What is Catalyst Infrastructure?

Catalyst Infrastructure brings together the service and growth infrastructure needs in a way that strengthens communities. The idea of Catalyst Infrastructure is beginning to generate some interest from those exposed to the tasks of building stronger frameworks for long term success. Dr Penny Burns of Strategic Asset Management has recently contacted me with her thoughts on this concept and was taken to provide an editorial review of Catalyst Infrastructure in the June copy of her fortnightly newsletter.

How to identify Catalyst Infrastructure?

The biggest challenge, especially for the underfunded and under resourced Local Government is how do you identify the 2 or 3 actions out of the pages of action lists that can be delivered to the community. Which actions will give you the most leverage, the best local outcomes and the best chance of secure public and private sector investment? …In short, how can you pick the winners!

Well it is easier than you think. The real strength of Place-based Enterprise is that it provides the process to identify and deliver outcomes that can guide growth to strengthen the community and support regional development.

Growing Places to Protect Local Identity and Lifestyle

It’s been a month since the Queensland Local Government elections and the dust is beginning to settle on the new Local Government landscape. The council amalgamations and downing sizing of councillor numbers has created a watershed moment in the transformation of the State’s Local Government and the future sustainability of many towns and communities.

At the centre of the reshaping of local government are the new Regional Councils. These are the new Local Government areas formed by amalgamating from two to eight neighbouring local councils. Their scale has created the need for new administrative and political structures.

One of the biggest impacts evident during the election process was the need for regional council candidates to focus their public policies at the strategic level. It is clear that the new Regional Councillors will need to act more as a board of directors than the traditional hands on fix it guys of smaller local councils.

The new challenge within the administration of Regional Council is how to effectively manage the delivery of services across large areas without creating a new level of senior managers that reinforces existing silos of responsibility rather than being a catalyst for innovative change.

Amongst Local Government’s many critical challenges of internal organisational structures, the looming liabilities of service infrastructure maintenance and the pressures of growth infrastructure for the booming regional centres there lays the forgotten lands of edge towns and communities. These are the small towns and localities within a two hour drive of our current raging growth centres.

For many of these small towns and localities the combination of narrow business bases, declining population and high levels of aging is eroding the very identity and lifestyles they cherish.

They may be small, but collectively they represent a significant part of our community and political landscape. These are the heartlands of community passion and pride of place. Where during the recent Local Government amalgamation process there was, and still is, a deep seated fear that this change will cause a loss of local identity and lifestyle.

There is also a growing realisation that time is running out to secure the long term sustainability of these small towns and localities.

These places are not screaming out for growth infrastructure, but rather innovative projects that provide catalyst infrastructure designed to reengage their economic base with future growth opportunities. It is about providing the missing bits of public infrastructure necessary to attract new private sector investment and create quality local jobs.

To avoid the slide into social and economic dysfunction requiring ongoing and increasing support of State and Federal agencies, the opportunity of Catalyst Infrastructure may be their last chance to turn things around.

Catalyst Infrastructure has the potential to be one of the most critical grassroots issues for local, state and federal government if our current economic prosperity is to be shared to build stronger more sustainable communities.

The current media attention and political debate about transportation, housing and environmental sustainability paint a picture of growth infrastructure needs that ignore the fact that the benefits of growth are not being evenly distributed through the community.

There a many places that need help to reconnect with the economic opportunities of the future.

This is going to be a particular challenge for many of the new Regional Councils as they grapple with the non-growth reality of many of the small townships within their growing Regional Council area.

How local and state government responds to this challenge will determine for many communities whether their fear of loss of identity and lifestyle was justified.

This is an issue I will be exploring in more detail at a public lecture being presented at the University of Sunshine Coast next month.

...see more details here.

The New Place of Regional Council

Background
On the 31^st January 2008 election roles close for Queenslanders to vote in the up coming local government elections on the 15^th March 2008. Queenslanders will vote in 73 local government areas. Of these 38 are existing councils, 31 are new councils and 4 are existing councils with changed boundaries. In total, people will vote for 73 mayors and 480 councils a significant reduction from the previous 157 local government areas and 1250 councillors.

Regional Councils are Born

The amalgamation process has created a new type of council for Queensland, the Regional council. There will be 30 Regional Councils. The largest being the Toowoomba Regional Council which has been created from the merging of 8 councils creating an undivided council that gives potential candidates an electorate bigger than the over laying federal electorate of Groom.

The shear logistics of canvassing votes for independent local candidates in regional council areas almost certainly means the end of apolitical councils and the beginning of future affiliations to political parties in order to access organisational support for campaigns.

For a discussion on the key challenges for new Regional Councils see Place-based Enterprise and Regional Councils white paper.

What should be a Place-based Enterprise policy platform for Regional councillors?

Times of change provide the best opportunities to set new directions. So if candidates were interested in creating better places for their communities what might be the foundation for their policy platform.

This policy challenge is in the context that the Regional Councils have been established by the State Government primarily to help deal with the challenges of growth in a more sustainable manner at the local level.

Here’s my suggestion:

• A vision of fair growth. Even in the good times, local government needs to be proactive and facilitate enterprise that builds a sustainable community. Use the power of growth to heal the local weaknesses and create a strong framework for the future.

• A commiment to manage growth. Growth requires considered management if it is to build a stronger community. It can be as destructive to local places as the lack of growth. Be ware, be smart, and benefit.
  

• A passion for the future of places shaped by growth. Not to be apologetic and offended by the inconsistency of growth benefits but to actively seek ways that this energy can be channelled to build a stronger community.
  

• Appreciate the natural forces of transition in healthy places. Actively protect the viability of local interests whilst helping transition to more profitable futures rather than a paternal approach with compensation.
  

• Knowing not all growth is good (for places).Taking the time to understand what growth can build a stronger community as well as rob the community of a future.Development is only a means to an end. It is a tool for change. How growth is directed is more important than whether it exists!
  

• Blocking or facilitating change is not the issue. It is how change is allowed to express itself. You can’t stop it but, you can harness it’s energy for good.The real challenge is knowing the consequences of stopping or facilitating change. Are you building a stronger local community or planting the seeds of its destruction?
  

 

A Place-based Enterprise Manifesto for Local Government

The focus needs to be sharp and simple. The implementation needs to be strategic and networked. The keys to delivering outcomes will come from initiatives in:

• What matters locally is Community Lifestyle
• How to guide change that protects lifestyle is a Governance role
• Focus on change that increases Local Wealth
• Use the fast track tool of Catalyst Infrastructure

For an outline of these ideas visit: A Place-based Enterprise Manifesto for Local Government

Our Town Our Future

In the last 2 years I have been working on a project called Our Town Our Future – A Revitalisation Strategy for Ingham, Queensland – Australia. It didn’t start with a title that long! But, it did offer the opportunity to push the boundaries of current and often failing practice to find a better way to deliver real outcomes for struggling towns and small communities.

In the last three weeks the project’s award tally has raced to six major awards after receiving four more awards acknowledging its innovation in communication, planning and process. It has been acknowledged that this project may well hold the secrets for places that will thrive in the future.

Using the principle that, “If you want different outcomes have you to do things differently”, this project has been an innovative action learning process.

From the start, it has been effective in challenging old assumptions and confirming better ways to create places that have a sustainable future.

The first bold proposal was to refuse to deliver a streetscape master plan as the catalyst for revitalisation and promote the development of a place-based prospectus. A document built on community vision and delivered through vibrant enterprise outcomes.

This fresh approach has provided the content for various Conference and University presentations on the principles and tools to deliver this integrated and practical grass roots approach.

This project has enabled the clarification of a lot of issues that whisper in back of your mind. The quiet voices that know the old ways aren’t working and we have to be smarter to succeed in the future. The Our Town Our Future project, which is a journey still in progress, has defined the value and effectiveness of Place-based Enterprise as a catalyst tool for creating better places for people and business.

It is an exciting time, when you contribute to the emerging principles and processes that can help deliver public infrastructure as a catalyst for development of more environmentally, socially and economically sustainable towns and communities.

"Place-based Enterprise offers a practical way to integrate various public programs through the delivery of public infrastructure as a catalyst for private sector investment and growth into the future."

Stay tuned for a future article on how local identity and the emergence of regional councils will benefit from a place-based enterprise approach.

Streetscape is Dead!

Well, I should more accurately say for those that really need catalyst projects to turn their places around..."Streetscape is Dead". It is no longer affordable in the extravagant ways it has been applied in the last two decades. 

What’s changed?

...mainly the cost. When it was relatively "cheap" compared to other general infrastructure it was easier to find the funds. And in that context, as long as it looked "pretty"...well, hey it must be doing some good!

Streetscape was seen as a quick fix with good political returns. The actual benefits were hard to quantify and that didn't matter too much because there was a broad belief by all stakeholders that through some sort of osmosis effect the triple bottom line was strengthened.

Yes, the good old days. If only we really enjoyed the naive simplicity at the time!

Today, there is less money for such untested public indulgences. At the local level the decades of under investment in general infrastructure is now looming as a crisis as much as the quickly escalating issues of climate change and energy scarcity.

Yet, in every crisis there is opportunity. The opportunity for sustainable revitalisation of Town Centres and rural communities now lies in new technology i.e. the internet and the emerging experience economy…where authentic places and experiences are in demand.

The economic justification has always been about jobs but it will be the smarter jobs and place jobs that will provide the long term vitality struggling Town Centres and rural communities are looking for.

It is a brand new world for those that seek to facilitate change through public infrastructure. There needs to be smart strategies that are based on community visions and cost effectively executed to deliver catalyst outcomes quickly...

...and that is what "Place-based Enterprise" offers. Not necessarily a new direction, but certainly a smarter one for times where the changes are rapidly increasing and funding is becoming much more accountable to meaningful outcomes rather than self indulgent artistic adventures and economically disconnected placemaking.

What is "Place-based Enterprise"?

Place-based enterprise builds stronger and more vibrant communities by promoting business that is intrinsic to what is local. The unique history, environment, culture and economy of a particular place provide the catalyst for place-based enterprise initiatives. It is sometimes referred to as experiential enterprise, environmental enterprise, community-based enterprise or enterprise for sustainability.

Free White Paper

For an outline of the thinking behind Place-based enterprise download your FREE White Paper at Vital Places.

Streetscape is Dead...Long live Place-based Enterprise!