Appeal to young in vision for city
THE head of Pure Projects, Don Morris, says Townsville needs to appeal to millennials instead of catering to “old farts” to have any chance of becoming a thriving metropolitan hub.
Mr Morris, who is the executive chairman of Pure Projects, was in Townsville yesterday to speak at the Urban Development Institute of Australia’s Transforming Townsville breakfast.
The breakfast was held at the Townsville RSL and hosted by UDIA Townsville branch president and North Shore project director Andrew Astorquia, who presented the longterm vision for Townsville.
Pure Projects has been tasked with providing a masterplan to transform Townsville and increase tourism dollars being injected into the region.
Mr Morris said Townsville would only become a sought- after tourist destination if locals started using public spaces first and the huge population of local millennials, people born between 1980 and 2000, needed to be catered for.
“You need to drill down to the demographics of who is actually here. Is it full of old farts like me or it full of bright young people?” he said.
“You actually have nearly 41 per cent of the population as millennials and the state average for millennials is 34 per cent ... yet there are old farts like me standing up and saying how to use this place.
“You have got a young population that’s going to get even younger ... you have to do your best to activate them and base your infrastructure around what they want to do with this place, because by 2025, more than half the Australian population will be millennials.
“You have to get the strategic positioning dead bloody right.”
Mr Morris said the underutilised CBD needed to be urgently addressed.
“We can’t expect tourists to use the CBD if you don’t want to use the CBD,” he said.
“It’s bleak, it’s hot and there is no shade.”