I went to WomAdelaide in 2010, the first time I had visited Adelaide since the 1980s. I had a great experience, found the recycling set-up at WomAdelaide first class (better than anything I had seen at NSW festivals - there was compost collection and even plates and cutlery were compostable). We had time to explore the city and hire free city bikes (no equivalent in Sydney), and travel on the free inner city buses, and see the wide streets with bike lanes Sydney residents could only dream of.
Adelaide's lack of "cranes on the horizon" could be due to respect for the city's heritage: meanwhile in a Sydney suburb just this week I viewed a proposal to build 14 storeys over the top of a heritage-listed building (this is really back-to-the-1970s stuff).
At WomAdelaide I was struck by the number of couples in their 20s with young children in tow (couples in their 20s in Sydney can't afford to have children), and we were driven to our accomodation from the airport by a young Afghani who had first settled in Melbourne, but moved to Adelaide for the cheap housing.
Yes, Adelaide is a small city but it has some great positives.

Fair comment John. I enjoyed Womadelaide too but alas, we can't live in an alternative music festival all of our lives. There is no doubt that Adelaide has made some solid contributions to alternative living and to the arts and unlike the writer, I tend to think Adelaide will scrape through on mining royalties. As they say over here, nothing is as precious as a hole in the ground. Be mindful that if GST revenues crash, Adelaide is shockingly exposed.

Adelaide is not the only Australian city suffering internal out-migration exceeding internal in-migration: Sydney also has more Australian residents moving out of it every year than those moving in. The only reason Sydney keeps growing is because of international migration. If Adelaide wants growth and dynamism, all it needs to do is attract more international migrants, which the city already appears to be doing to some extent due to the attraction of its cheap housing.
My final impression of Adelaide after WomAdelaide 2010 was jealousy, a feeling of: why do I put up with Sydney traffic jams, lack of bicycle lanes, lack of any free transport? However, being a professional in a very specific discipline, and my spouse being in a similar position, Sydney is where the work is, aside from any "closed shop" syndrome that may be operating in Adelaide.
Adelaide looked like a great place to retire though...a lot more civilised than beach retirement locations along the NSW coast with poor health infrastructure, summer traffic problems, and few cultural activities. It's no wonder older people don't want to leave Adelaide.
Finally, the worst aspect of Adelaide and South Australia generally, in my opinion, is the print media being entirely Murdoch-owned. Sydney's Daily Telegrapth is a total rag, but at least we have an alternative and can ignore it if we wish to. Adelaide residents: get yourself an online subscription to the Sydney Morning Herald/National Times/The Age

"If Adelaide wants growth and dynamism"

NO, THANKS!

Adelaide is one of the few places to escape from the above and lead a quiet peaceful life.

"the print media being entirely Murdoch-owned"

The print media? Actually I own it because I got enough stock of it to last my life! It's only used to check the oil level in the car, brush shoes, glue broken stuff on top, etc.

I am sure that some of Adelaide's problems derive from the skewing of its foundation. The first shipload of folk to come here acquired large tracts of land, but each took too many acres to be able to run their new properties without help from a (non-existent) extra work force. They are inspired by a Newgate prison inmate (jailed for trying to run off with an heiress)to get the labour power t hey need by putting sizable price on land for the second shipload of English emigrants - who therefore, unlike the first mob, had to undertake manual work to get the cash to buy some land. A two tier society was thus established at the outset. This was re-inforced as a social class distinction, I am reliably informed by a local historian, by the practice of holding land sales of the cheaper tracts (such as comprised by the Port Adelaide peninsula) on the weekend, while desirable and more fertile land out in the eastern areas, was sold during the week. This meant that the better off folk were able to attend the better land sales, while those who had to toil for their bread with 'regular' employment and no time off during the week, were automatically restricted to the cheaper land. Thus was born the famed "Adelaide Establishment".(to be continued)

(Continued from previous post).... The political geography of Adelaide became North Terrace (read 'Adelaide Club') versus the plebs on the plains. The sense of entitlement that accrued to the former, and the sense of deprivation which accrued to the latter, became entrenched. Later, in the Dunstan years, the old Adelaide Establishment was elbowed aside by the 'new bureaucrats' (see Djilas for an academic analysis of this kind of phenomenon, albeit of elsewhere). At this point the ethic of 'noblesse oblige' which was found in the earlier stages of elite formation,and gave the city Elder Hall and Bonython Hall, got lost with the ambitions of the noveau riche to get a firmed up place in the scheme of things with the acquisition of personal wealth derived from managerial salaries created in the career structures of a much expanded 'public service'. This version of Adelaide's history seems to me to square with what I have encountered in living here. It is softened by recent initiatives in media/IT arenas. But has anybody got a better overall framework within which to understand how Adelaide became the Adelaide we know today?