Sustainable Smart Cities: Evaluation of Australian Practice

Sustainable Smart Cities: Evaluation of Australian Practice

The rapidly expanding cities and unparalleled level of urbanization throughout the world have opened ways for smart cities. Cities of tomorrow not only need to be smart but also incorporate the ever increasing demand of sustainability. In this context, Australian cities are evaluated in terms of their social, economic and environmental sustainability factors since they provide expensive and assessable practices. To assess the sustainability performance, this paper evaluates six most populated Australian cities and compares them for smartness. It identifies key factors and their sub factors which contribute to sustainable smart cities and influence their success in terms of economic and environmental sustainability. The identified factors are divided into two groups: socio-economic and environmental and four sub-groups: governance, retrofitting, land use and environment. The findings reveal that Australian cities rely highly on governance, followed by land use, environmental management and least on retrofitting. This implies that the role of government is most significant in achieving the smart city goals. Fortunately, the policy making and regulatory authorities seem aware of this responsibility. The paper provides useful insight into the Australian smart cities, the key sustainability factors of which can be adopted by the developing countries.