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ABSTRACT: Uncertain post-pandemic population trends raise an interesting dilemma for regional governance authorities. Population stagnation afflicting non-metropolitan regions had been a familiar feature of Australian history. In recognition of its serious social and economic effects, population retention and growth have been familiar elements within the development strategies promulgated by regional governance authorities. Such was the case for South Australia's Limestone Coast region. Unexpectedly, the coronavirus pandemic became associated with more favourable population-movement trends for many regions, including the Limestone Coast. In that region, there is an emerging sense that future strategic challenges may centre on the housing and infrastructure implications of a growing population rather than on the problem of a stagnant population. The strategic response of the region's governance authorities is hampered by the uncertainty about whether the more favourable population trends will turn out to be a temporary or a more enduring phenomenon.
KEYWORDS: Regional governance; regional population strategy; COVID-19 pandemic; limestone Coast.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: This article draws on a research project funded by the South Australian Local Government Association Research and Development Scheme (project 2020.62). The authors thank this journal's reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft.
1. INTRODUCTION
This article explores the impact on South Australia's Limestone Coast regional population strategy of an unexpected improvement in population trends triggered by the coronavirus pandemic. The article does not offer a definitive appraisal of the population trends as such. Rather, its focus is on their implications for the regional governance authorities responsible for re-examining the region's strategic response.
The genesis of the article was a research project which examined the strategic response within the Limestone Coast region to evident population stagnation. The project, conceived in early 2020 and funded in mid-2020, undertook its investigations across the 2021 calendar year. The project's methodology, involving a regime of within-region interviews, consultations, documentary analysis and observations, is elaborated upon in its published final report (Parkin and Hardcastle, 2022).
At the project's conception, it was not evident that a distant public health issue in China would prove to be a harbinger of a global pandemic. By mid-2020, however, the coronavirus had arrived in Australia. Across 2021, a spasmodic regime of lockdowns and state border closures had become a familiar feature. Unexpectedly, it became evident that the...