Smart City Initiatives: A Catalyst for Meaningful Collaboration

This paper explores the potential for smart cities initiatives to drive partnership formation. It presents lessons learnt from the collaboration between the Faculty of Built Environment at the University of New South Wales Sydney, Street Furniture Australia, and Georges River Council, New South Wales, as partners in a Commonwealth-funded smart cities grant awarded in 2017. The research pilots how environmental sensors can inform the potential to improve the amenity and use of public open spaces, and contribute to the asset management system of small-scale street furniture. This project provides a basis from which to explore the opportunities and challenges of collaboration across three domains (academia, industry, government) while conducting a smart cities project. We demonstrate how mutually collaborative efforts can better harness real-time data, to identify and address citizens’ needs, interests, and demands, for public space in parks and plazas, in addition to assisting council with developing an efficient asset management system.