The City of Prospect's creative community plans

The City of Prospect is leveraging its digital advantages to improve operations, service delivery and the vitality and prosperity of the community.

The City of Prospect is a smart and creative city, evidenced by the international Intelligent Community Forum awarding the council Top 21 Smart City status no less than five times. From a flatlined economy in the early 2000s, Prospect has become a leading example of how local government can drive reform and investment, and what a digital economy can do for local businesses and the community.

We were one of the first councils to recognise the importance of emerging technologies and the positive impact they could have on our community and its economy. This was driven by a desire to turn our lagging inner metropolitan economy into one that is a vibrant, flourishing and multidimensional, where businesses can thrive and locals can access more services closer to home.

Our journey started with data. We analysed our local economic profile and, despite our above-average performance and spending capacity in other areas, realised we had low levels of broadband use. Seeking to turn this weakness into a strength, we developed a comprehensive Digital Economy Strategy in 2008 — which received national attention, an award from Economic Development Australia and widespread imitation.

At its core, our focus on adopting new technologies was, and continues to be, driven by our desire to dramatically improve the depth and breadth of our local economy and the investment and jobs that can flow from it.

We were successful in securing Stage 2 nbn rollout status because our Digital Economy Strategy focused not only on technology and infrastructure but on community engagement and training.

Our Digital Hub has delivered over 10,000 local training outcomes, making our 21,000-strong community one of the most digital savvy in the country. Council’s Network Prospect initiative has attracted hundreds of businesses and regularly delivers business-specific training and networking opportunities focused on digital engagement, profile optimisation, online marketing and social media engagement. These training opportunities are embedded within a general program of business assistance and traditional business development advice, making digital the new normal in Prospect.

City of Prospect Mayor David O’Loughlin.

Now in its third generation, our economic strategy formalises the emerging Prospect Road Innovation Precinct and seeks to create an integrated approach between talent, skill, training, support, built form and digital capacity to stimulate innovation and creativity within the very desirable Village Heart precinct on Prospect Road.

At the centre of the cafe- and restaurant-rich precinct we have two co-working spaces — Little City Co-working Studio and Business Hub Serviced Offices. Both offer a range of accommodation types and tenures, and have stimulated dozens of start-ups and business elevations from out of the home and into the main street.

City of Prospect has collaborated with multiple local businesses and property owners to provide South Australia’s and one of Australia’s fastest free Wi-Fi networks, with 50 Mbps regularly available for uploads and downloads.

Research is showing that free Wi-Fi helps to boost local economies, with increased visitation by residents, shoppers, professionals and tourists to local businesses. Our broader objective is to encourage professionals and home-based businesses to treat the precinct as their ‘open air, coffee on tap’ workplace, facilitating the semi-formal interactions and networking opportunities so vital to the success of the Australian economy, and to growing businesses in particular.

Flowing from Prospect’s Stage 2 nbn rollout status, we are the only council area in the state with fibre available to every premise as of right now. This FTTP status has proved very attractive and is one of the reasons businesses and families are buying into the area — and when they do they stay, with house sales volumes falling markedly in recent years as locals choose to stay and enjoy the benefits.

Investor interest has also increased markedly and, in conjunction with our corridor zoning changes, has resulted in nearly 750 new apartments being constructed, under construction or approved for construction since 2014. The total value of dwellings under development exceeds $200 million.

Interest in the Village Heart precinct continues to surge, with record sale prices, multilevel development approvals and record off-the-plan apartment sales. The most recent apartment building to come to market sold out in less than three months, further validation of the market’s confidence in our smart city credentials and high local amenity.

Digital engagement

Prospect’s digital advantage has recently been enhanced by gaining access to the state government’s GigCity Adelaide program, which offers 1 Gbps internet speeds to innovative business precincts and the ability to transfer files to other businesses on the GigCity network at up to 10 Gbps through the government’s SABRENet fibre links. These speeds are 10 and 100 times faster than fibre-to-the-premises nbn technology, respectively, creating a draw for data-reliant businesses across the country, some of which are already attracted to Prospect’s offering.

Our focus on digital advantage has moved beyond access to fibre and now embraces competitive tensions to stimulate an active, high-speed, high-capacity marketplace for local businesses. Prospect is now a hyperconnected city with fibre offerings from nbn and TPG, as well as the through the GigCity program. All the fibre is already in the ground, providing local businesses and investors with unparalleled and highly competitive access to a range of Australia’s fastest data services.

Council is also developing a new $19 million Community Hub Library and Innovation Centre (CLIC), with completion scheduled for September 2019. The new library, art gallery and improved heritage Town Hall will include a number of meeting rooms, some with 24/7 access, to facilitate community activation and business training, and will be another key attractor to the precinct.

Artist’s impression of the Community Hub Library and Innovation Centre.

Our strong digital business engagement program has recently focused on marketing our core Prospect Road precinct. The Prospect Road Discover More campaign is primarily being delivered across digital platforms and features a suite of targeted videos custom-created for social media channels.

We are now using our public Wi-Fi network to monitor the people traffic on Prospect Road. Prospect Fast Wi-Fi system has seen an increase of over 100% in the number of devices (pedestrian traffic) travelling through the Village Heart this year to date. Tracking this data confirms the impact of council’s investment in the public realm and digital platforms.

We are also getting international credit for our work. In response to the City of Prospect’s commitment to using technology to improve our community, the US-based Intelligent Communities Forum have not only bestowed multiple awards on us, they recently invited us to join their international board. Council is gaining recognition well beyond its boundaries as a creative council, and continues to innovate and collaborate with business, government and education sectors in a range of fields, with our partnership with the University of Adelaide to form SA’s Smart City Consortium just one example.

Our external focus is unrelenting but we haven’t ignored our own systems, with many improvements over the years. We recently received Commonwealth partnership funding to develop an application for monitoring use and maintenance of our local parks network. With four council partners, we will use the tool to track visitation, rainfall, plant growth, waste management, lighting controls and many other aspects of park management. In time the tool will develop into an open access platform for vendors to make decisions regarding temporary food and beverage provision and for event planners to advertise their expertise — creating an income stream for participating councils.

We believe that we will continue to grow and prosper; we will continue to leverage our digital advantage to both improve council’s operations and service delivery and, more importantly, to improve the health, vitality and prosperity of our local community.

*David O’Loughlin was elected to local government in 2003 as a councillor and has been the Mayor of City of Prospect since 2006. He has also served as a state board member and association president of, and now serves as National President of, the Australian Local Government Association.

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