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Clare and Barossa Integrated Strategic Tourism Plan

The Clare Valley and Barossa Tourism Regions Integrated Strategic Tourism Plan provides guidance to help attract sustainable tourism investment to these regions. This project was strongly aligned with South Australia's sustainable tourism strategy, which is guided by principles including differentiation; authenticity; reflection of community values; respect for natural and cultural values and ecological processes; and excellence in design.

In many rural and regional areas of South Australia, planning policy unduly restricts innovative tourism development that seeks to address environmental sustainability principles and provide an authentic, high quality, visitor experience. Communities are understandably cautious about tourism developments that could threaten valued environmental and cultural attributes.

This project identified the qualities of the physical and social environment that are valued by the local communities and those ecological assets that must be protected in order to sustain the 'natural capital' from which tourism derives its value. Drawing together consultation and environmental research, the team was able to match the types of tourism development needed to meet the needs of existing and emerging visitor markets to the most appropriate environments.

A key focus of the project was on developing target markets to attract people who are currently not visiting the regions. This enabled the identification of the core products that are used to focus and drive regional positioning and branding.

The Minister for Urban Development & Planning released the Ministerial Mount Barker Urban Growth Development Plan Amendment (DPA) in June 2010 for public consultation. This DPA proposes to rezone approximately 1300 hectares of rural land on the edges of Mt Barker and Nairne for residential and light industrial use.

With the aim of ensuring that its community was well informed and empowered to comment on the Ministerial DPA, the District Council of Mt Barker engaged URPS to run a series of information sessions for the local community. These six sessions were extremely well attended, with more than 300 people able to hear about and ask questions regarding the Ministerial DPA process and how to go about getting involved in this part of the planning system.

In a letter to the editor of the Mt Barker Courier, Jean Lovell of Nairne said that "Mt Barker Council is to be congratulated for its commitment to proper community consultation" and that URPS was "highly professional and responded in detail to questions in an articulate, honest and informed manner".

This is evidence of the success of these types of community information sessions and the goodwill and engagement that Mt Barker Council has fostered with its community through the process. We also believe that this type of process leads to informed and valuable input from the community to key planning initiatives such as this Ministerial DPA."