Smart City for Smaller City

Clear vision with specific goals and objectives combined with clear division of role and responsibilities is critical in establishing Smart City. However, only 11 out of the 69 councils in Sydney dan Melbourne that Dowling et al. (2019) study, that shows local municipalities are equipped with appropriate Smart City Strategy for their local areas. The current condition city governance that relies heavily on the local government without sufficient political and funding support from the federal government may explain why that Smart City implementation in Sydney and Melbourne are still carried out in piecemeal. The limitation of resource that local government may impose challenge to the smart city initiatives in terms of scaling up and expanding the initiatives. However, the study also shows despite the piecemeal approach, local government do show a good capacity to carry out urbanism. Dowling et al. (2019) further advice local government to finetuned the smart city initiatives to the local context, so that they correspond correctly with local need. Strengthening partnership with diverse stakeholder is also key to support local government to execute the smart city initiatives. 

Reference:

Dowling, R., McGuirk, P., & Gillon, C. (2019). Strategic or piecemeal? Smart city initiatives in Sydney and Melbourne. Urban Policy and Research, 37(4), 429-441.

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