Cooperating on Urban Sustainability: A Social Network Analysis of Municipalities across Greater Melbourne

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a social network analysis of twenty-five municipalities within Greater Melbourne to determine which organizations are most central in urban sustainability work. By analysing how cities' urban sustainability documents cross-reference each other, I find a geographic pattern of collaboration from the city centre northwards to the urban fringe. State government agencies and regional utilities are the most important external organizations. The results confirm a multi-scalar approach to understanding local governments and urban sustainability, while emphasizing multiple approaches of local governments within a metropolitan region. Furthermore, water was the key to defining sustainability in Greater Melbourne in the mid-2010s.

这篇论文对大墨尔本地区的25个城市进行了社会网络分析，以确定哪些组织在城市可持续发展工作中处于最中心的地位. 通过分析城市的城市可持续性文件是如何相互参照的，我发现了一种从城市中心向北到城市边缘的地理协作模式. 州政府机构和地区公用事业是最重要的外部组织. 结果证实了理解地方政府和城市可持续性的多尺度方法，同时强调了大都市区域内地方政府的多种方法. 此外，在2010年代中期，水是定义大墨尔本可持续发展的关键.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban sustainability
• social network analysis
• suburbs
• local government
• melbourne

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Steve Radil for looking over an earlier version of this manuscript. Thanks to Charles Zhang and Sijia Wang for providing research assistance. This research was not externally funded.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).