The city's movers and shapers will meet community members today for a "Lab Day" to dissect thousands of great ideas to reshape the city.
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Dressing up dreary walls with murals or vertical gardens; linking local food producers to retail outlets and reusing shop-tops or empty city spaces were some of the ideas generated at an "ideas-a-thon", held last month as part of the city-revitalisation project.
The project, called Shaping Wollongong, is the brainchild of the Illawarra branch of the Property Council of Australia, which hired Melbourne-based consultancy Hello City to gather ideas to create a vision for the city.
Wollongong City Council, the University of Wollongong and the GPT Group are among the organisations involved in the project, which aims to come up with quirky, practical, artistic or business-related ideas to revitalise the city.
Hello City consultant Sunny Haynes said the ideas-a-thon attracted 170 participants and highlighted the passion many people shared for Wollongong.
She said a selection of ideas from that May 10 event would be discussed further at today's Lab Day and the winning ideas would be showcased in a document to be released next month.
"There's 41 ideas that have been quite well developed and more than 3000 'spark' ideas that warrant further discussion," Ms Haynes said.
"They range from bringing blank spaces back to life by planting vertical gardens or painting murals, to getting more people living in the city centre to create more vibrancy, and trying to get cafes and restaurants to sign up to having a certain percentage of food coming from local producers.
"Aside from the ideas we've received we've been doing surveys and looking at existing reports and strategies because it's not about starting over, it's about taking the momentum that's already there and building on it."
The feedback so far was that Wollongong was mostly getting it right.
"Wollongong already has a great culture of collaboration, the city just wants to do more of it - to be more focused, more connected, more active," she said.
The Lab Day, to be held at Wollongong Golf Club for invited participants, will help Hello City and the Shaping Wollongong team develop their final report.
"Everyone, from emerging artists to council planners to food producers, will be sitting round the table to discuss the best ideas to take the city forward," Ms Haynes said
"It's about everyone getting together with the people who understand what it takes to make these ideas a reality. Only then can we start to develop a real strategic direction and action plan for Wollongong."
