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