Pedestrians will be able to walk easily to the City Beach foreshore, which could have quirky cafes, bike stores and beach-sensitive architecture to create a strong link between the urban centre and the sand.

Further, some of the most run-down parts of the inner city, like the “arrival” precinct at Wollongong station, will become attractive and vibrant, filled with public art and new businesses.

This is the vision set out in Wollongong council’s new Public Spaces Public Life strategy, which Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbery said would become the “destiny” for the fast-growing CBD.

As well as setting out a future direction, the document has identified some of Wollongong’s main problems: its “underwhelming” city arrival, a “detached” foreshore with dull and uninteresting links to the city and a concentration of day-time skewed activities.

To fix this, six projects are proposed: an overhaul of the railway entrance, western Crown Street, the mall, MacCabe Park, the arts precinct and the foreshore.

Under each project, the report has listed a series of “quick wins” which could take effect almost immediately, as well as a series of medium and long term strategies which will require support and funding from other levels of government.

Some of the quick wins include new signage, hole-in-the-wall coffee shops, temporary and removable “parklets” on the roadside, outdoor displays and art installations, food vans and more outdoor markets in the mall.

In the longer term, several new master plans will be developed to rebuild key areas, like the South Beach forecourt and the large WIN Corp-owned block between Crown, Keira, Burelli and Atchison streets.

The strategy has been led by Gehl Architects, a Copenhagen firm which led Melbourne’s transformation from an inactive city in the mid-1990s to the “world’s most livable” city it is today.

The council’s planning director Andrew Carfield said the overall vision, coupled with the numerous smaller initiatives would have an immediate effect on the city.

“We’re providing more tangible stepping stones to transformation and renewal, by identifying small scale projects and things we can do each year to help improve these important areas of the city,” he said.

“And if we improve the quality of our public spaces, we’ll improve the quality of life in the city.”

The draft public life strategy will be open for public comment for 16 weeks over summer.