Townsville: A Regional Development Case Study

Townsville (including the adjacent Burdekin Shire (Ayr), Dalrymple Shire (Charters Towers) and Hinchinbrook Shire (Ingham) in North Queensland) has had significant regional development growth in population and in private and public sector physical infrastructure over the last 20 years. The question that interests us in this paper is: What can we learn, with the benefit of hindsight, about the drivers of the growth in private and public sector physical infrastructure in Townsville, over the last 20 years? This paper is based on primary data from open-ended-question interviews of regional development practitioners and policy makers in Townsville. We focus on: What has, and what has not worked; and we attempt to explain why we think that the successes have worked.