By Paul Hemsley

The ‘City Activation’ plan will run for six months from October 2011 to March 2012 aiming to deliver projects faster and economically.

With a budget of $100000 from the City of Adelaide, the program will work in collaboration with businesses, property owners and other community partners.

Mayor Stephen Yarwood said the council will be able to learn about what works and what does not by initiating pilot projects.

“By trialling an idea or a new approach for a short period of time, we will be able to test the waters, evaluate outcomes and survey public opinion before investing significant resources,” Mr Yarwood said.

Council has set funds aside for ideas submitted by the community as part of Council’s Picture Adelaide consultation, which will be used as a starting point for the program.

The first round of projects will include art fairs, community gardens, temporary food vendors and public art installations.

General Manager for ‘Active City’ Katrina Marton said the basic idea is a pilot enables something to be tested and does not need to be subject to all restrictions.

Ms Marton said the program gives the council the chance to cut through its own ‘red tape’.

“Something would come up as an idea, and it would have to be worked up into a project plan and then it would be approved and it would have to wind its way through all the processes,” Ms Marton said.

“One of the issues is when someone comes up with a great idea, it’s grinded through three months of process and enthusiasm is lost at the end.”

Ms Marton said council has created an internal team with three existing staff  working with businesses and community groups on activating ideas.

“We can waive certain programs that may not have anything to do with safety or alternate legality and that’s the really important thing,” she said.

“We can just get rid of some of that stuff and put a pilot out there and also we don’t have to go through legal consultation processes that also slow us down.”

She said council can gage public response while the project is up and running so that during that period of time, “the lag between the idea and its manifestation is reduced”.

The size of these activations will not reduce work for personnel at the council around what would be called “normal processes” because the ‘City Activation’ is a new initiative to work with.

Ms Marton said the program would not have much impact on procurement because the small amounts of money being put towards enabling an enterprise is not going to impact on that realm.

“It’s not designed to cause lots of other work and make lots of other impact, it’s meant to streamline,” she said.

According to Ms Marton, the program might influence other councils throughout Australia as the City of Adelaide was influenced by a similar scheme in New York City.

“Other councils might be observing how well it works for us and seeing if it can work for them,” she said.

The City of Adelaide will have an evaluation after the six months on individual projects as well as whole initiative.

“We’d be happy to share that with other councils in terms of what they might be strategically looking at,” Ms Marton said.

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