Description
The smart city is a popular concept and urban development strategy that promotes the integration digital technology processes and systems for urban management and service provision to address problems associated to rapid urbanization, to enhance urban competitiveness, and to improve a city’s image and branding. Although scholarly smart city definitions highlight the significance of local culture, and local governments claim that smart city visions should be localized and people-centered, there is less evidence about how smart city strategies and initiatives intersect with and actually connect to the cultural dimensions of cities and places. Accordingly, this research thesis explores the relationship between smart city strategies and local culture. It adopts the qualitative research method of an in-depth case study to examine how cultural dimensions have been accounted for and have also shaped the development and implementation of the North Sydney Smart Strategy 2019-2022 and selected smart city initiatives. To build a rich picture of the case in question, the research collects a range of data including grey literature, field observations, online reviews, and data from interviews conducted with key stakeholders involved in the creation and implementation of the North Sydney Smart Strategy 2019-2022 including council staff, strategy consultants, project officers and operational staff. To draw out findings and insights from the data, the research adopts a thematic analysis method and situates the findings in relation to the emerging concept of smart culture. The research findings indicate that, at an overarching level, the North Sydney Smart Strategy 2019-2022 operated in many ways as a vehicle to consolidate a range of digital projects and objectives across numerous Council departments. The research also provides evidence of how cultural heritage is leveraged in smart city stratification in an Australian context in the sense that already existing digital heritage projects are re- branded as smart city initiatives to appear to deliver quick smart city wins. As such, the research thesis contributes to perspectives on how Australian local governments are responding to the challenges of becoming smart cities as well as the growing discourse and theorization of smart culture.| Period | 1 Aug 2024 → 31 Oct 2024 |
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| Examinee | Guanlin He |
| Degree of Recognition | International |