From empty streets to community prosperity: How the Hazara community changed Adelaide’s Prospect Road

Empty streets, closed shops, and broken glass on pavements — that’s what Hanif Rahimi recalls of Prospect Road, in the inner northern suburbs of Adelaide, just two decades ago.

He’d just arrived in South Australia with his family, and what’s now been called Little Afghanistan was far from anything he thought possible.

“After, let’s say, six, seven o’clock in the evening, not many people were walking on the streets because they were scared. It wasn’t safe,” Mr Rahimi told the ABC.

“This area was completely empty. The shops were completely empty.”

Mr Rahimi was among a number of Hazara refugees who would soon call Adelaide home, a community that’s now among the state’s largest non-English speaking communities.

But the Prospect Road of the…