Smart heritage in selected australian local government smart city policies

Abstract

Smart Heritage leverages the past to transform cities into smart cities. It bridges a theoretical framework between the existing smart cities and heritage discourses and can benefit both the smart and heritage of aspirations of cities. The recent increase in the preparation of smart city policies by local governments in Australia provides an opportunity to examine how the recent generation of smart city strategic documents implement Smart Heritage. This paper will investigate how three local government smart city policies in Australia; City Futures Strategy by Logan City Council, Lake Mac Smart City Smart Council: Digital Economy Strategy 2016-2020 by Lake Macquarie City Council, and Smart, Connected Brisbane by Brisbane City Council; implement Smart Heritage. It will also briefly discuss the areas in the policies where further implementation of Smart Heritage can support the smart city ambitions of the cities. The main findings are the policies subtly implement Smart Heritage, and it is most present in high-level definitions and objectives. There is a need to develop Smart Heritage lower-level provisions and initiatives as there is a lack of these across the policies. Nevertheless, there is ample theoretical overlap between Smart Heritage and the policies to further implement Smart Heritage within the existing policy frameworks.