ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the principal economic and demographic trends in Adelaide in the early twenty-first century. Adelaide to operate as a city rather than as a series of parishes' but successive state governments have shown little enthusiasm for this, primarily because of its likely electoral unpopularity. The Rann Government maintained a strong commitment to ecologically sustainable development while simultaneously pursuing the economic growth priorities of the State Strategic Plan. The Liberals revised the metropolitan planning strategy in 1998 and this was the plan in force in 2000. Consultation on the draft metropolitan planning strategy in 2005 was more limited than previously and legislative changes around this time contributed to a loss of local democratic input into planning decisions. The compact city has been a key building block of twenty-first century planning and environmental strategies for metropolitan Adelaide. Slow population growth, an ageing population, a high level of car dependency an unemployment rate higher than the national average and growing inequality.
