The Challenge:
Hamilton City Council in New Zealand is taking a lead role in developing a Hamilton-Waikato Metro Spatial Plan, a joint long-term growth plan in partnership with Central Government and Iwi. It will identify key opportunities and potential pilots for new Government planning, funding and financing tools.
Council identified an opportunity to learn from the Australian experience that made similarly designed deals successful.
What we did:
In October 2019 Astrolabe Group curated a City Deal knowledge exchange with a delegation from Hamilton City Council and its partners. The delegation keen to learn from the Australian experience in relation to governance and partnership arrangements as well as resource requirements that made Australian Deal’s successful and engaged in a knowledge transfer on how they could be improved.
Astrolabe provided a detailed background briefing prior to the tour and curated the trip with site visits in Western Sydney and South East Queensland.
Meetings were organised on site, with expert advice from Councils, State and Federal Government focusing on the process of constructing a deal. Showing delegates the places and the people involved helped to accelerate knowledge transfer, through rapid immersion.
Results:
- City Deals in Australia background briefing
- Australian City Deals Discovery Tour including site visits in Western Sydney and South East Queensland
Client testimonials:
“From our first interaction, Astrolabe understood our specific requirements and tailored an inspiring and highly informative two day visit of organisations that are shaping the future growth of Australian cities. The team ensured that our time was allocated wisely, and that the people we met with provided a broad range of insights”.
“Astrolabe clearly has fantastic industry contacts across all key players in the sector, and the genuine respect and strong relationships that they have with the senior staff was evident in the willingness of all parties to make our visit extremely successful. We would have no hesitation in recommending Astrolabe as superior consultants to help organisations like our Council to shape and plan for future communities”.