Parramatta smart city and the quest to build Australia's next great city

In this chapter, we address the latter question, using the Parramatta Smart City Masterplan (PSCM) as an example of how success and failure are contested terrains of evaluation, and can only be understood in relation to the wider policy frameworks and concerns through which smart city initiatives are framed locally. Parramatta, one of Australia’s fastest-growing local councils, was the first city in Australia to launch a wide-ranging smart city plan, as part of wider urban renewal efforts which have been collectively advanced under a rebranding effort to build ‘Australia’s Next Great City’. The Masterplan included the appointment of Australia’s first smart cities officer. The officer’s purported role was to drive smart city implementation; to champion Parramatta’s technology investments at industry and policy forums; and to ensure that Parramatta would remain ‘up to date’ compared to smart city initiatives in places like Amsterdam, Barcelona and Chicago.