That change affects how and where governments deliver things like rail upgrades and new roads, said Infrastructure Australia's (IA) Chief of Policy and Research Peter Colacino.

Read more: Kanahooka - the under-appreciated suburb

IA has just released the 2021 Australian Infrastructure Plan, which it is required to every five years, and is delivered to federal government to consider.

Mr Colacino, who grew up in Stanwell Park, said there had been a mass exodus of people out of capital cities and into places like the Illawarra and South Coast.

"There's been a really big movement - the largest in Australia in recorded history - out of Australia's big cities in into the regions and we're really thinking about what that means in terms of the infrastructure response," Mr Colacino said.

"What we're seeing is absolutely faster growth in regions. That's people staying longer because they don't have to come into Sydney to work

"It's also people relocating there, people moving to their beach house and finding that they can take their job with them because we're all on Zoom these days."

He said those big cities will bounce back but the aim for Wollongong and other regions is to look at measures to entice those people who came to stay here.

Mr Colacino said COVID had resulted in a far more rapid take-up of technology - from Zoom chats to service innovations like Teleheath and even the increase in online grocery shopping.

There has also been a spike in the number of people installing solar panels as they look to build "personal resilience" into the way they use the energy infrastructure.

The field of energy is one where the Illawarra is well-placed, Mr Colacino said.

"There's this investment that's going into Tallawarra power station to make it hydrogen ready and the conversation about around hydrogen in the steelworks and port precinct provides a really interesting opportunity for Wollongong to grab a new growth industry and to run with it," he said.

"The prospect of having a hydrogen-ready power station, having gas infrastructure in the Illawarra that's arguably underutilised, a large industrial base, a deep-water port, a steelworks facility that could be able to leverage that hydrogen infrastructure to be a green steel facility.

"There's the real makings in the Illawarra of the opportunity of better coordination between all of those infrastructure assets and Industries."

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