Recently Deloitte published a report recommending that Adelaide needs to double its annual population growth between now and 2027 in order to increase from 1.7m to 2m people.

It reminded me of an article which talked about the size of population where a city becomes economically self-sustaining – the notion that if enough people are doing and buying enough things, then enough money and employment is going around that it creates a perpetual economic motion.

I consider myself a relatively accomplished web surfer. I’ve self-diagnosed numerous serious illnesses and recently ordered the children fidget spinners that won’t be delivered until after the craze is past. But on this one, I just could not find that article. What I did find was quite significant bodies of work from Western Australia contemplating employment self-sufficiency – where a region has enough employment for everyone who lives there to work locally, and so the commute becomes a thing of the past. This is different to economic self-sufficiency, but equally interesting, and WA are taking it seriously.

So many of our major projects are based on mass transit. Roads or rail, trams and the supporting infrastructure of stations and connectors which then lead to further residential focus and clustering – remember TODS. Much of this transit is based around getting the worker to work, and increasingly also the student to education or the patient to care as we drive efficiency by centralising services. However, while we save on care and education, we spend on transit and we pay with time. Our time; priceless time.

It is a positive thing that the politicians have heard our message to maximise public transport instead of resource heavy private travel, but could there be another message to focus on not needing it?

We do consider employment lands in our planning system, but in reality Adelaide is a very CBD centric city. We don’t really contemplate ‘city’ type jobs being elsewhere.

My own practice moved to Chesser Street 2 years ago, and we love it because there is a buzz which comes from people. Most other similar practices in SA are also already in or moving to the city, yet all of us could actually deliver our work from any metro location. If we had a few offices north and a few south we may get enough people working there to have a buzz too. We could just swap team members based on geographic spread, and we’d all get back the time of the commute. I don’t think we value time enough. It’s pretty precious when you think about it. We design to save money and resources; we should also design to save personal time.

I like Deloitte’s idea of a bit more size and a bit more money moving around. I think international education, defence, agribusiness, energy and gas and tourism area all future builders, but I like the idea of spreading it too.

I’ve heard Playford self-promoted as the CBD of the North. I hope it works. I hope a bold community steps up for the South, and I hope the people who gain another hour a day use it for something special.

Mario Dreosti
SA Chapter President