City of Adelaide

City of Adelaide South Australia
Population	22,063 (2016 census)[1]
• Density	1,417.0/km2 (3,670.1/sq mi)
Established	1840
Area	15.57 km2 (6.0 sq mi)
Mayor	Martin Haese
Council seat	Adelaide city centre
Region	Metropolitan Adelaide
State electorate(s)	Electoral district of Adelaide
Federal Division(s)	Division of Adelaide
Website	City of Adelaide
LGAs around City of Adelaide: Charles Sturt Prospect Walkerville West Torrens City of Adelaide Norwood Payneham St Peters West Torrens Unley Burnside

The 'City of Adelaide is a local government area in the metropolitan area of Adelaide, South Australia. It covers the original Adelaide city centre, (also known as the city, the CBD and [inaccurately] the square mile), North Adelaide, and the Adelaide Park Lands which surround North Adelaide and the city centre.

Established in 1840, the organisation (known until c.2010 as the Adelaide City Council (ACC)) was the first municipal authority in Australia. At its time of establishment, Adelaide's (and Australia's) first mayor, James Hurtle Fisher, was elected. From 1919 onwards, the municipality has had a Lord Mayor, the current being Martin Haese who replaced Stephen Yarwood in 2014.

History

Initially the new province was managed by colonisation commissioners. Colonial government commenced on 28 December 1836. The first municipality was established in 1840 as The City of Adelaide Municipal Corporation. However, due to a combination of constitutional difficulties arising from the mayor's resignation, hostility of the incoming Governor Grey and falling revenues due to the onset of the colony's first economic crisis, the corporation became moribund in 1843. From 1843 to 1849, control and management reverted to the colonial government, and from 1849 to 1852 the municipality was managed by a Commission with five members. With the positive economic effects of the Victorian gold-rush, a formal municipality was re-established in 1852, and "has operated continuously ever since".^{[2][3][4][5][6]} However, The city's relationship with the state and federal government has been described as being 'a continually abrasive relationship'.^[7]

The Council started in 1840 with nineteen members, who chose four of their number to be Aldermen, and then one of these (James Hurtle Fisher) to be Mayor. In 1852 the municipality was divided into four wards. Three Councillors and one Alderman were chosen, who in turn selected the Mayor. In 1861 the Mayor was chosen by all the electors and the position of Alderman was temporarily abolished. In 1873 the municipality was divided into six Wards, each represented by two Councillors. In 1880 the office of Alderman was recreated; they were chosen by electors of all Wards. The office of Mayor was raised to the stature of Lord Mayor by Royal Letters Patent in 1919. The Lord Mayor received the right to be styled ‘The Right Honourable’ in 1927.^[4][6]

The Arms of the City of Adelaide were granted by the Heralds College in 1929.^[3] In 1982 the Council approved the design of the Armorial Flag.^[3]

In 2015, the Council became the first government of any kind in Australia to offer a financial incentive for installing battery systems.^[8]

Population

At the end of the 20th century, the city had little more than thirty per cent of the population it had in 1915 (when the population reached more than 43,000), and about 5,000 less than the 1855 population of 18,259.^[6] In proposing reforms and his advocacy for town planning legislation, Charles Reade illustrated the Adelaide slums associated with the City's high population levels with lantern-slides accompanying his lecture "Garden cities v. Adelaide slums and suburbs" in the Adelaide Town Hall on 8 Oct 1914.^[9] Reade was attacked by the Adelaide City Council who fought against the Town Planning and Housing Bill reforms^[10] and the press pointed out the wickedness of families being forced to 'herd together more and more in overcrowded conditions of living' and the 'sheer nonsense on the part of the City Council to pretend' that there were no slums in the city:^[11]

The City Council does not want to learn. It seems to want the slum owners to be left untouched so that the landlords may reap their harvest of gold while the poor of this city reap their harvest of suffering, disease, and other ills associated with bad housing.^[12]

In seeking a return to higher density population levels, Adelaide City Council launched its 'New Directions' with its three themes of Capacity, Vivacity and Audacity on 3 July 2001.^[13] The "Capacity" theme proposed doubling the City's population by 2010 and increasing the number of City visitors and workers.

According to the Annual Reports,^[14] the population has increased rapidly, due to the targets stated in the strategic plans developed at about that time.

Coat of arms

Notes

• The population figures have been extracted from Adelaide City Council Annual reports. The data is summarised on pages 149-150 of A Thematic History.^[15] Additional data not in that summary can be found in the reports on the council's "Annual Reports" page.^[14]
• 1840 The initial Annual Report noted a population of 8,480, with 1,615 buildings in the city.
• 1844 The second available figure (6,107) is also the minimum recorded in council reports.
• 1880s There are no figures available for the period between 1881 and 1912. South Australia suffered a severe depression in the 1880s when the State population, (and probably the city's population too), declined.
• 1915 The peak population was 43,133.
• 1921 The State population passes 500,000. The city population was 39,458.
• 1963 The State population passes 1,000,000. The city population was 23,000.
• 1993 There is only one figure available between 1976 and 1999 - 11,405 in 1993. It was in the late 1990s that the council developed and started implementing its plans to increase the city's population, and not until 2004 when it started regularly updating the population estimates based on figures supplied by the Bureau of Census and Statistics.
• 2001 In 2001, the council set targets for population numbers for 2006 and 2010. These targets were raised considerably in 2003. In 2009, targets were set for 2012.

Year	2016-17	2015-16	2014-15	2013-14	2012-13	2011-12	2010-11	2009-10	2008-09	2007-08	2006-07	2005-06	2004-05	2003-04	2002-03	2001-02	2000-01		2006 goal	2010 goal	2012 goal
Permanent residents	23,396	23,169	22,690	22,200	21,600	22,000	21,800	21,200	19,800	19,700	18,400	15,000	14,361	13,734			13,289		16,000 25,000	25,000 34,000	25,500
Dwellings	11,546	10,860	11,467	10,860	10,860		13,100	12,500	11,388	10,600	9,900	9,900	9,600	7,335	7,335		5,510
Overnight population						28,000	29,800	29,200	27,400	27,100	23,800	22,000	21,090	19,610	17,861	17,861	19,900				34,500
Overnight visitors						6,000	8,000	8,000	7,600	7,400	5,400	7,000	6,729	5,866
Daily visitors(*)	311,414	262,000	228,673	228,670	228,670		86,500	79,000	74,000	60,000	75,000	75,000	75,000	103,500	103,500				125,000	150,000
Workers	115,250	122,700	122,700	118,200	118,200	118,000	126,500	126,500	118,500	108,000	108,000	99,000	95,682	93,000	93,000		89,000		98,000	111,000	125,000
Students	67,100	64,000	64,000	86,700			90,000	88,000	86,700	81,100	75,000	63,000	59,240	51,900	50,597		50,000		58,000	66,000
Daily population								220,000	205,000	208,200	190,000	200,000	200,000	216,000	215,000
Office space(**)								1.503	1.443	1.200	1.184	1.038	1.100	1.109

 * Visitors to the city from the Adelaide Metropolitan area, for all purposes
 ** Square kilometres (millions of square metres) of office space. i.e. 1.503 km² = 1,503,000 sq. metres.
Sources:^[14]
2016-17 2015-16 2014-15 2013-14 2012-13 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 2006-07 2005-06 2004-05 2003-04 2002-03 2001-02 2000-01 1999-00 1998-99 1997-98

Adelaide Park Lands

The city's 2010-11 Annual Report noted that the total area of the City of Adelaide is 15.6 km², of which 7.6 km² is Park Lands.^[16] Other sources put the Park Lands area closer to 7.0 km².^[17] The original area was 2,300 acres (9.3 km²⁾,^[18] a number the Council still regularly quotes.^[19]

Services and amenities

Apart from providing the usual services like rubbish collection and controlling local development, the City of Adelaide owns and operates a number of city services and amenities, including:

• A network of 9 car parking stations (Central Market, Grote, Gawler, Pirie Flinders, Light Square, Rundle, Topham, Wyatt and Frome) branded as UPark. ^[20]
• Adelaide Central Market, a popular tourist attraction and working market selling cheap fruit and vegetables and other products.
• Adelaide Aquatic Centre, offering several indoor heated swimming pools, diving facilities, and a health club. ^[21]
• A network of local library and community centres from which local residents can borrow books, music, videos and computer programs, and gain access to computers and the internet.
• Free bus services, 98C and 98A,(operated as The Connector until 2014), which runs through the CBD and North Adelaide, with stops at every major tourist attraction and council library. A new Connector bus, with more seating capacity, entered service in 2007, replacing one of the smaller buses that used to ply the route. The bus is named Tindo (after the Kaurna word for sun) and is hailed as the world's first solar powered bus.^[22] The 98C is a clockwise loop while the 98A is anti-clockwise and the service has now been modified to better suit everyone's needs.^[23]

Sister cities

The City of Adelaide has been involved in the Sister Cities program since 1972 and has international partnership arrangements with: ^[24]

• Christchurch, New Zealand since 1972 - Sister city
• George Town, Penang, Malaysia since 1973 - Sister city
• Himeji, Hyogo, Japan since 1982 - Sister city
• Austin, Texas, USA since 1983 - Sister city
• Dalian, Liaoning, China since 2001 - Friendship city
• Chengdu, Sichuan, China since 2001 - Friendship city
• Qingdao, Shandong, China since 2013 - Sister city

Flag

The armorial flag of Adelaide, was approved on 2 August 1982.^[25]

Notable residents

• William Bragg – Nobel Laureate of Physics - X-ray crystallography as a method for 3-D structure determination of inorganic salts^[26]
• Howard Florey – Nobel Laureate of Medicine - Widespread development and application of penicillin^[27]
• Robin Warren – Nobel Laureate of Medicine - Discovered role of Helicobacter pylori in gastric ulcers^[28]
• Shaun Micallef – Actor and host of Talking About Your Generation
• Frank Woodley – Actor and comedian
• Paul McDermott – Host of Good News Week
• Sir Donald Bradman - Australian cricketer, widely acknowledged as the greatest batsman of all time.
• Julia Gillard - 27th Prime Minister of Australia

See also

• List of Adelaide suburbs
• List of Adelaide parks and gardens
• Local government areas of South Australia

References

• McDougall & Vines (2006) The City of Adelaide - A Thematic History, www.adelaidecitycouncil.com. (PDF, 780Kb, 156 pages)
• Peter Morton (1996) After Light: A History of the City of Adelaide and its Council, 1878-1928

External links

• City of Adelaide website
• City of Adelaide community profile
• City Profile and Population (Numbers from 2008-2009 Annual Report)
• Media related to Adelaide at Wikimedia Commons

Coordinates: 34°56′S 138°36′E / 34.933°S 138.600°E / -34.933; 138.600