Melbourne narrowly beats Sydney in smart city rankings

Melbourne has been ranked the top major city in Australia, and the 27th in the world, in a ranking of cities using technology to improve the lives of their citizens and meet sustainability targets.

The ranking from EasyPark evaluated cities on a number of criteria, including the technology innovations to improve mobility, the business technology infrastructure of each city and the city’s response to the growing climate crisis.

Sydney ranked 30th on the list of cities with more than 3 million residents. Adelaide was the only Australian city in the top 50 rankings of cities with 600,000 to 3 million inhabitants at 44th, with Auckland coming in 49th.

For smaller cities with 50,000 to 600,000 people, Canberra ranked 45th and Wollongong 50th. Wellington (47th) and Christchurch (49th) also made the list.

But all three categories were largely dominated by European and US cities. The top performing cities in each category were London (major cities), Copenhagen (mid-size cities) and Lund in Sweden (smaller cities).

Cities were ranked along four weighted categories — digital life, mobility innovation, business technology infrastructure and sustainability.

For the digital life category, criteria included both governments’ and citizens’ willingness to adopt new technologies, healthcare innovation and the quality of available technology education. Mobility innovation included criteria for parking and traffic management and the availability of clean transport.

The business technology innovation category included criteria for the start-up activity in each city, the prevalence of digital payments, and internet and 5G availability.

Finally, the sustainability category took into account the share of each city’s energy consumption that comes from renewable sources, the number of buildings certified as green, as well as cities’ waste management capabilities and climate response activities.

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