Sustainable Development Strategy for the Global City: A Case Study of Sydney

Abstract

Global cities, the command and control centres of the integrated world economy, are facing a sustainability paradox of greater global competition and greater environmental pressure. This study explores the policy approaches to the sustainability paradox by integrating environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness into the development strategy for “the global city”, based on a case study of Sydney. Dissecting Sustainable Sydney 2030, the strategy to guide the City’s development in the early 21st century, reveals the approaches used to achieve the integration. The approaches include green economy, sustainable redevelopment, integrated transport and connectivity, development of attractive public space, urban design for sustainable and good-looking urban form, marketisation of sustainability for a competitive edge, and a relational planning approach. Altogether they target mutually supportive benefits of environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness. The findings point out new directions for the City’s strategic development, and suggest a useful reference for counterpart global cities to address the common sustainability paradox.

1. Introduction

This study injects sustainability into the conceptualisation of and approaches to the development strategy for “the global city”, which has been constructed to capture the impacts of contemporary globalisation on cities. According to Sassen [1], global cities are the command and control centres of the integrated world economy; they represent a new urban phenomenon that embeds a particularity in contemporary globalisation. This conceptualisation has determined that the development strategy for global cities has been economic-centric, dominated by a globalised neoliberal urbanism that has prioritised global competitiveness. At the same time, global cities are also facing increasing environmental pressure. This presents a sustainability paradox for global cities since they experience higher development pressure from global competition, which causes more negative environmental consequences [2]. Integrating environmental sustainability with economic competitiveness into the development strategy is a common imperative for all cities, but it is a more demanding challenge for global cities.

This study aims to unpack the “integrativeness” of environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness in the development strategy for the global city. Based on a case study of Sydney, it dissects Sustainable Sydney 2030, the strategy to guide the City’s development in the early 21st century, to reveal the policy approaches used to address the sustainability paradox. The article is organised as follows. This introduction is followed by two sections of literature review, which are on the sustainability paradox in global cities and on Sydney’s historical development strategies respectively. Then it elaborates on the features and thematic patterns of Sustainable Sydney 2030. The following section discusses how environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness are integrated into the sustainable development strategy of Sydney. The article concludes with a summary of the policy approaches used in the strategy.

2. Sustainability Paradox in Global Cities

Numerous studies have been undertaken to understand contemporary global cities. They are largely built upon the thesis of global cities as the command and control centres linking the integrated world economy, which has been proposed and advanced by theorists like Friedman [3], Sassen [1], and Taylor [4]. Concurrently, the literature on urban sustainability has been burgeoning, responding to the interlinked challenges of urbanisation and sustainability. There is an intrinsic association between the global city phenomenon and the sustainability challenge. However, little is known about the specificities of sustainability in global cities. Global cities are defined by their urban node roles in the world economy, whereas the sustainability challenge is traversing national and urban boundaries. Does globalisation-induced development present any particular challenges or opportunities to sustainability in global cities? Are global competitiveness and urban sustainability compatible goals for global cities? What are the implications for development strategies of global cities in different settings? Answering these questions has been limited by the scarcity of literature on sustainability in global cities. A few preliminary works have tried to address these concerns, and suggest pathways for further scholarly exploration. They are examined below.

What limits the advancement of urban sustainability has involved the interplay between two variables: a limited understanding of the science behind sustainability, and a lack of commitment and apprehension by governments [5]. The same observation is applicable to sustainability in global cities. What is our understanding of sustainability in global cites? What efforts have governments made to advance sustainability in global cities? Despite formidable gaps in research, some anecdotal evidence suggests that global cities do possess unique attributes that foster larger or different socioeconomic metabolisms than other cities [2] (p. 1772):

…a global city’s comparatively higher developmental pressures from globalisation carry heightened risk and compounded negative consequences for ecological sustainability relative to other urban areas. Moreover, as production and consumption metabolisms outstrip local natural resource capacities, the global city footprint holds implications beyond its urban confines for natural resources procurement and waste disposal.

In the Australian context, an examination of 18 major cities (population more than 100,000) indicates that a city’s growth is positively correlated with an environmental cost; this pattern is more evident in larger cities including global cities Sydney and Melbourne [6].

The impacts of contemporary globalisation on global cities are thus dual: global cities as the economic engines of the world economy, and global cities as the sites of higher energy consumption and larger ecological footprints. This duality presents a sustainability paradox for global cities—“simultaneously to sustain the developmental benefits of globalisation and to sustain ecological integrity over the long run” [2] (pp. 1760–1761). This paradox differentiates global cities from other cities in the global urban hierarchy. In a globalised world, cities of all sizes and hierarchical levels face the dual pressures of global competition and environmental sustainability. However, the extent of such pressures differs. Global cities are atop the global urban hierarchy, thus facing higher development pressures to sustain the activities related to their roles as the command and control centres of the integrated world economy. Apart from commercial and residential property development to accommodate global service activities and workers, development pressures also come in the form of infrastructure required to support development and public facilities for global events, such as the Olympics.

Governments’ actions towards sustainability in global cites vary. London and New York have more similarities in sustainability goals, but their approaches toward sustainability goals are different due to dissimilarities in geography, local cultures, and diverse environmental politics [7]. They converge in the creation of greener cities by adopting concomitant environmental sustainable strategies: New York focuses on energy efficient buildings and fuel efficient cars, whereas London is leading in using renewable energies and establishing public-private partnership and energy conservation [7]. In East Asian global cities, the government’s perceptions of and commitments towards sustainable development are instrumental in their sustainability practices, given the central role played by the state in these political economies [8]. These examples indicate that global cities have different governance and approaches to sustainability due to various local contexts, even though they have common sustainability imperatives and goals. This observation will be further tested by Sydney’s experiences.

Sustainability challenges cities to ensure that development contributes to a reduction in ecological footprint and an improvement in quality of life simultaneously [9]. The paradox of maintaining economic growth and environmental sustainability is a common challenge to development strategies for global cities. One proposition is that economic growth and environmental sustainability should be integrated into the competitiveness of global cities, moving from an economic-centric conceptualisation to incorporate multiple dimensions of a global city’s development [10]. However, little has been investigated as to how the paradox can be effectively addressed in policy practice. This study will use Sustainable Sydney 2030—the newest development strategy for the City of Sydney—to unpack how the aspirations of global competitiveness and environmental sustainability can be integrated into the development strategy for the global city.

3. Development Strategies for Global Sydney

The City of Sydney lies in the core of the Greater Sydney region (see Figure 1). The City had a resident population of 196,800 and employment population of 395,300, while the Greater Sydney region had a resident population of 4.4 million and employment population of 1.8 million, according to the 2011 Australian Census [11]. As the central business district (CBD) of the Greater Sydney region, the City is the most globalised area in Australia. Sydney is head office to almost half of the top 500 companies and 60 out of the top 100 largest corporations in Australia and New Zealand; almost 80 per cent of international and domestic banks with an Australian head office are based in Sydney, and 65 per cent of all banking and finance industry business and 70 per cent of Australia’s financial services are in Sydney; more than 15 per cent of Australia’s exporting advanced business services, including banking, investment and IT, are located in Sydney [12]. Internationally, Sydney was classified as an Alpha city (very important world cities that link major economic regions and states into the world economy) in 2000 and 2004 and as an Alpha + city (highly integrated cities that complement London and New York, largely filling in advanced service needs for the Pacific Asia) in 2008, 2010 and 2012 [13]. This trend reveals Sydney’s increasing importance in the global city hierarchy.

Figure 1. Map of the City of Sydney in the Greater Sydney region.

Figure 1. Map of the City of Sydney in the Greater Sydney region.

Sydney’s development strategies have been dominated by a neoliberal urbanism aiming to enhance its global city status and global competitiveness since the 1980s. Competitive globalisation presents a new context for planning and development in Sydney. The success of planning a prosperous Sydney relies on richly informed and fine-grained understanding of the complex spatial outcomes of Sydney’s ever-deeper global integration [14]. In this regard, Sydney is not an isolated case; it is a global practice. Urban plans in many major cities throughout the world have become increasingly oriented towards promoting the city’s competitive advantage, under the logic that economic globalisation is leading to increased competition for investment between cities [15].

Sydney’s metropolitan planning has been exposed to neoliberalist techniques, aspirations, and ideologies [16]. Since the late 1970s, metropolitan planning in Sydney has been subordinate to economic development [17]. In the 1990s, economic competitiveness was one central discourse of Sydney’s metropolitan strategies, in addition to ecologically sustainable development and compact cities [18]. In the early 21st century, Sydney’s metropolitan planning continued to support the primacy of economic competitiveness in its vision, and its formation has been influenced by the private sector’s pro-development aspirations [19,20]. To shape a global Sydney has been more imprinted in the planning transformations in central Sydney, the core area of Sydney’s global activities. Major planning transformations include the prominence of economic competitiveness, the neutralisation of social concerns, and an emphasis on urban design [21].

The neoliberalist development strategy has been operationalised in multiple ways in Sydney. They include land use and infrastructure planning to attract and accommodate global economic activities [22], and to compete for global entertainment activities such as Casino and the Olympics to market Sydney for global capital and tourism [23]. Major planning tools include urban consolidation and intensification, leading to high-rise gentrification in adjacent inner-city neighbourhoods [24,25,26,27] and the pursuit of urban design excellence in central Sydney in particular [28]. Urban consolidation has evolved into a very sophisticated and flexible policy framework. Rather than managed expansion encouraging densification within the urban imprint, the government identified the need to increase density and to promote a wider choice of housing types within the developed areas [29]. Further, it has evolved from pushing higher density and inner urban redevelopment to focusing on accessibility and design [24]. In central Sydney, urban redevelopment has enabled the provision of commercial spaces to accommodate new global activities, and high-rise apartments for the creative class especially in the traditionally industrial waterfront zones [21]. The imperatives of housing affordability and environmental pressures coincided with the emergence of a neoliberal ideology in promoting urban consolidation. Neoliberalism preferred policies such as urban consolidation that purport to reduce government spending and enhance inter-regional completion [24,25].

On the other hand, urban design is a ready tool deployed to promote economic competitiveness, to aspire to capital interests and values, and to attract the creative classes in their desire for gentrification and inner city living [30,31]. In central Sydney, urban design has experienced a recent remarkable shift from design agnosticism to the pursuit of design excellence; the shifts include imposing statutory urban design codes, launching special urban programs, renewing public spaces, and requiring design competitions for all major development projects [32]. The pre-Olympics 2000s provided a good opportunity to implement these changes. Globally operative “signature” architects (e.g., Renzo Piano, Norman Foster) were contracted to imprint their designs in commercial development, to facilitate the planning approval process and to add value to the buildings that they designed [32]. Urban design also played a role in popularising the inner-city redevelopment of high-rise apartments through its New Urbanist appeal [26]. Behind the shift is a consensus that quality urban design could present a global image, market Sydney, and add value to Sydney’s attractiveness and competitiveness [21].

To sum up, up until the beginning of the 21st century, development strategies in Sydney have been dominated by the goals of economic development and enhanced global competitiveness under the influence of a neoliberal urbanism. Environmental sustainability began to be a policy concern. However, it was subordinate to the primacy of economic competitiveness. The following section examines the newest development strategy Sustainable Sydney 2030 to see if it denotes any different attributes and thematic patterns from the previous strategies.

4. Sustainable Sydney 2030

Orchestrated and released by the Independent Lord Mayor Clover Moore in 2008, Sustainable Sydney 2030 is the first comprehensive strategic planning document for the City of Sydney’s development in the 21st century. It sets the vision of Sydney as a “Green, Global, Connected” city to guide the city’s economic, environmental and social development. It articulates an aspiration to environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness through the three visions and their linkage. The “Green” vision addresses the City’s environmental sustainability—Sydney as an internationally recognised environmental leader in terms of environmental performance and green economy, through green infrastructure, integration of housing with facilities, and protection of the ecology. The “Global” vision addresses the City’s economic competitiveness—Sydney as a global city covering important economic issues of tourism, investment, business, talent, innovation, and knowledge. The “Connected” vision addresses the City’s local and regional transport network, social issues of community life and equality, and partnerships between stakeholders and wider engagement. There are new elements in each of the three visions. The “Green” vision links environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness through the “green” economy; the “Global” vision injects global talent, innovation and knowledge into the conventional conceptualisation of global city as a centre of business, investment and tourism; the “Connected” vision moves beyond transport to incorporate social inclusion and partnership-based cooperation and engagement. Unpacking these elements helps capture the new directions of the City’s strategic development.

To achieve the vision of a “Green, Global, Connected” city, Sustainable Sydney 2030 encompasses ten targets and ten strategic directions (see Table 1). Thematically, the targets and strategic directions are mostly split between the concerns of environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness, in addition to social equity. Of the ten targets, six items (1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9) set specific targets for environmental sustainability, two items (3, 5) deal with economic growth, and the remaining two items concern social issues. The ten strategic directions are the core of the document. Most of the strategic directions address either environmental sustainability or economic competitiveness, or embed both. The first two directions are explicit articulation of the importance of economic competitiveness and environmental sustainability respectively. Most strategic directions combine both environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness imperatives. For example, strategic direction 9 injects sustainability into urban renewal demanded by a global city’s development, using urban design as a major tool.

Since its adoption in 2008, Sustainable Sydney 2030 has been placed within the framework of the New South Wales (NSW) Integrated Planning and Reporting legislation for implementation and monitoring (see Figure 2). The ten targets and ten strategic directions have been used to provide a framework for action. It has been updated as a Community Strategic Plan (2013) to ensure that its message and content is contemporary. The Community Strategic Plan is supported by the 4-year Corporate Plan (2013–2016) as the City’s delivery program, and by a detailed Operational Plan (2013/14) that sets out the city’s projects and activities for each year. These documents are all underpinned by a Resourcing Strategy (2013), including a long term financial plan, a workforce strategy, and an asset management strategy. All of the plans are tested and refreshed annually and subject to review with each newly elected Council. The next review will be in 2016–2017.

Table 1. A snapshot of Sustainable Sydney 2030.

Ten Targets	Ten Strategic Directions
1. Reduce 1990 green house gas emissions by 50 per cent	1. A globally competitive and innovative city
2. Capacity to meet local electricity and water demand	2. A leading environmental performer
3. 48,000 additional dwellings	3. Integrated transport for a connected city
4. 7.5 per cent of all housing social housing—7.5 per cent affordable housing	4. A city for pedestrians and cyclists
5. 97,000 additional jobs in the City	5. A lively, engaging city centre
6. 80 per cent of City workers commuting on public transport—80 per cent of work trips by City residents in non private vehicles	6. Vibrant local communities and economies
7. 10 per cent of trips made in the City by cycling—50 per cent of trips made by walking	7. A cultural and creative city
8. Every resident within a 10 min (800 m) walk to a main street	8. Housing for a diverse population
9. Every resident within a 3 min (260 m) walk of continuous green link	9. Sustainable development, renewal and design
10. 45 per cent of people believing most people can be trusted	10. Implementation through effective partnerships

Source: [12].

Table 1. A snapshot of Sustainable Sydney 2030.

Ten Targets	Ten Strategic Directions
1. Reduce 1990 green house gas emissions by 50 per cent	1. A globally competitive and innovative city
2. Capacity to meet local electricity and water demand	2. A leading environmental performer
3. 48,000 additional dwellings	3. Integrated transport for a connected city
4. 7.5 per cent of all housing social housing—7.5 per cent affordable housing	4. A city for pedestrians and cyclists
5. 97,000 additional jobs in the City	5. A lively, engaging city centre
6. 80 per cent of City workers commuting on public transport—80 per cent of work trips by City residents in non private vehicles	6. Vibrant local communities and economies
7. 10 per cent of trips made in the City by cycling—50 per cent of trips made by walking	7. A cultural and creative city
8. Every resident within a 10 min (800 m) walk to a main street	8. Housing for a diverse population
9. Every resident within a 3 min (260 m) walk of continuous green link	9. Sustainable development, renewal and design
10. 45 per cent of people believing most people can be trusted	10. Implementation through effective partnerships

Source: [12].

Figure 2. Implementation framework of Sustainable Sydney 2030. Source: [33] (p. 21).

Figure 2. Implementation framework of Sustainable Sydney 2030. Source: [33] (p. 21).

5. Discussion

This section discusses the extent to which environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness are integrated into Sustainable Sydney 2030 to identify the policy approaches employed, and how. Sustainable Sydney 2030 has an implicit framework containing the classic three pillars of sustainable development (economic, environmental, and social development) in the Brundtland Report [34]. Sustainability has been constructed as an integrative concept to emphasise the interlocking nature of the three pillars. However, the triple bottom lines often have competing discourses, and are not directly commensurable with each other. Thus, striving for positive synergies between them represents a crucial task for sustainability-oriented decision making [35]. The particular interest of this study is the integration of environmental and economic dimensions into the sustainable development strategy for the global city to address the sustainability paradox. The focus is not on their trade-offs, but on their mutual benefits.

Through its overarching vision of a “Green, Global, Connected” city, Sustainable Sydney 2030 represents an attempt to integrate environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness. Under the umbrella framework of sustainable development, the strategy links environmentalism with neoliberal urbanism. While neoliberal urbanism has dominated Sydney’s strategic planning for more than two decades until the beginning of the 21st century, this strategy establishes a primacy of environmentalism in its vision and strategic directions. This shift marks a significant re-orientation of the development strategy for Sydney as a global city.

Seven policy approaches are identified in Sustainable Sydney 2030, which are used to integrate environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness (see Figure 3). They range from economy and urban redevelopment, to urban design and a relational planning approach. Of these approaches, green economy and sustainable redevelopment integrate the environmental and economic dimensions directly; the transport system, place-making, and urban design contribute to their mutual benefits indirectly; urban design is a tool of sustainability and place-making; and marketisation of sustainability and relational planning are new planning approaches to establish the primacy of sustainability among stakeholders with a shared vision. They account for the complex interrelationships between environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness, which function simultaneously and in a mutually beneficial manner within the development strategy.

Figure 3. Integrating environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness.

Figure 3. Integrating environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness.

Green economy and sustainable redevelopment directly inject environmental concerns into the economic-centric and pro-growth imperatives of global cities as the urban nodes of the integrated world economy [1]. In Sustainable Sydney 2030, environmental sustainability adds not only new content but also a new approach to a globalist economic development paradigm. The “Green” vision puts environmental performance in parallel with economic growth driven by green industries. Green industries have dual connotations. On the one hand, they should be environment-friendly, carbon-neutral, and generate low energy and waste. On the other hand, they are knowledge-intensive, innovative, technology-based, and conducive to the attraction and retention of global talent. The second connotation has a stronger presence in the “Global” vision that highlights innovation and the importance of global talent. Sustainable redevelopment inserts sustainability criteria into the requirements of major redevelopment sites; the latter are more characteristic of global cities that face higher development pressure from global competition [2]. Sustainable Sydney 2030 requires that the City’s renewal areas are sustainability exemplars and must meet aggressive sustainability targets. This is established through setting sustainability targets for individual renewal areas, and undertaking broad economic cost-benefit analysis to prioritise sustainability. Economic growth and urban redevelopment have been key signifiers of strategies for global cities, including Sydney. The new practice here is the injection of sustainability into them.

Integrated transport systems and liveable and accessible places contribute to the integration of environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness in an indirect manner. Environmental sustainability is an explicit objective of connectivity and accessibility in Sustainable Sydney 2030. The policy measures include enhanced access by public transport; a green corridor system for pedestrians and cyclists, consisting of a network of safe, linked pedestrian and cycle paths integrated with green spaces; and a lively, engaging city centre created by making more public spaces for activities, meeting, rest, and leisure. Their relevance to economic competitiveness lies in the creation of a sustainable, dynamic and liveable urban space for people who live and work in the City. This place-making is meant to attract knowledge workers and creative class to enhance Sydney’s competitiveness in the knowledge economy. Both transport systems and place-making were conventional policy tools in the previous development strategies for Sydney. The new practice here is the injection of an economic objective into them.

Urban design is a common tool to achieve sustainable urban redevelopment, enhanced connectivity, and liveable space in Sustainable Sydney 2030. Urban design excellence has been imposed by a strong neoliberal planning regime to ensure that central Sydney would continue to act as a national growth engine [28]. The pursuit of good design is further strengthened in Sustainable Sydney 2030. Measures include a “finer-grained” urbanism based around small shops and services, civic spaces oriented towards pedestrians, and the reinvigoration of intra-block laneways by small bars and cafés [36]. The objective is more than creating a global image and amenity space to attract investment and talent. The expanded objective includes improved sustainability, enhanced accessibility, and creation of green space across the City. Utilising urban design for not only globalist but also environmentalist aspirations differentiates Sustainable Sydney 2030 from the previous development strategies that used urban design for globalist goals only.

The marketisation of sustainability hinges on the “integrativeness” of environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness in Sustainable Sydney 2030:

Green solutions are, in fact, increasingly presented not solely as necessities for an expanding metropolis faced with internal environmental problems and transnational climate change dangers, but also (if not predominantly) in a somewhat commodified form as accessory features of Sydney’s lifestyle branding used to promote the Harbour City in the global marketplace.

[37] (p. 387)

Here, the “greening” of Sydney is instrumental to enhancing Sydney’s global competitiveness. Putting sustainability at the core of Sydney’s competitive and innovative edge and tackling sustainability as a source of global competitiveness provides an alternative policy approach to the integration of a global city’s environmental and economic imperatives.

A relational planning approach is emerging to address the need to incorporate environmentally sustainable development and economically competitive cities [38]. The static of blueprint planning is replaced by an emphasis on dynamics and fluidities. This understanding of the relational planning in Sydney has been informed by Healey’s [39] thesis that spatial strategies need to create a nodal force in the ongoing flow of relational complexity. According to Searle [38], Sustainable Sydney 2030 is indicative of a few key features of Healey’s [39] relational planning thesis. They include partnership-based formulation and achievement of the strategy’s sustainable vision, and an emphasis on activity nodes and the connections between the nodes and beyond the City. To what extent relational planning has informed the formulation of Sustainable Sydney 2030 to warrant a valid proposition remains muddled. However, it does offer an emerging approach that has the potential to integrate environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness into the strategy for a global city.

This case study is situated at a particular moment in the specific context of Sydney. Its wider resonance and significance needs to be explored. Addressing the dual challenges of environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness has become a globalised imperative, in both the developed and the developing worlds. London and New York, the top two cities in the global city hierarchy, have taken enormous measures to ensure the sustainability of those cities. Despite cultural and geographical differences, both cities have shown more convergence than divergence in sustainability initiatives [7]. The common areas for sustainability initiatives cover energy efficiency, transportation, air pollution, water resource, biodiversity and open space, recycling and waste, green infrastructure, and climate change, despite their different approaches to achieving the sustainability goals [7]. These common areas are shared by other global cities to various degrees, including Sydney. However, the comparison between London and New York reveals that the environmental sustainability approach has become a new avenue of competition, in which New York is determined to close the gap with London [7]. This adds a new layer of environmental competition to the existing economic competition between global cities. Marketising sustainability as Sydney’s competitive edge has a resonance here. These practices in global cities substantiate the theoretical advancement of urban competitiveness, moving from an economic-centric conceptualisation to incorporate environmental sustainability [6,10,40].

Further, the environmental initiatives embed a symbolic and rhetoric value that is instrumental to the promotion of global cities. The commodification and marketisation of environmental sustainability as a source of Sydney’s global competitiveness is echoed elsewhere. In Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai, environmental initiatives have also become core elements of city strategies. Similarly, their policies reveal a tendency toward “spectacularisation”, through which the city governments actively endorse various green initiatives to stage “spectacles” to promote their cities [41]. This phenomenon marks an environmental turn of urban governance, through which the corporatist governments find new expressions in the environmental arena. This is seen in the increasing zeal regarding rankings for urban sustainability, such as The Sustainable Cities Index [42] and The Green City Index [43]. In addition to the various rankings of economic performance, city leaders and citizens find a new articulation of the “competitiveness” of their cities in the rankings of sustainability and the associated branding value.

Apart from the greening of urban strategy and governance, global cities are finding more ways to articulate their competitive relationships. The commonly used approaches include the global connectivity and corporatisation of mega-event Olympics [44,45], the pursuit of starchitecture for global image and the “Bilbao effect” [46,47], the development of new economic discourse and places [48], and insistence on a growth-dominated strategy according to neoliberal orthodoxies [49]. Despite scepticism of the locality-based international initiatives [50], these practices converge to represent a globalised tendency. They are all reflected in Sydney’s previous development strategies to various degrees. This tendency continues in Sustainable Sydney 2030, through its strong globalist aspirations and the involvement of internationally recognised designer Jan Gehl to prepare the strategy.

The dissection of Sydney’s strategy and its international resonance suggest a globalised policy tendency. The seven identified policy approaches are not necessarily new practices per se. They are common planning tools applied previously and concomitantly elsewhere. However, the lens of integrating environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness sheds new light on the utilisation of these policy approaches. It is the “integrativeness” that differentiates the understanding of Sustainable Sydney 2030 from Sydney’s previous strategies and experiences elsewhere. They are meant to provide a useful reference for other global cities facing the common sustainability paradox, an issue that has not been much researched in terms of knowledge and policy. This exploratory study demands one major consideration. The focus is on the content of the strategy document to identity thematic attributes and patterns. It makes no attempt to evaluate the policy effect because of the long time span of implementation. This calls for two further research in two directions. One is to empirically measure the positive synergies between environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness in a global city; the other is to evaluate policy effects by linking the synergies with the development strategy addressing the sustainability paradox.

6. Conclusions

This study investigates the global city’s development strategy in the dual contexts of global competition and environmental pressure, which have formed a sustainability paradox. Using Sydney as a case study, it dissects the strategy Sustainable Sydney 2030 to understand how environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness have been integrated to address the sustainability paradox. The strategy employs a sustainable development framework that links environmentalism with neoliberal urbanism, under which environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness have been integrated to seek positive synergies. The integration has been accomplished through policy approaches such as green economy, sustainable redevelopment, integrated transport and connectivity, making of attractive public space, urban design for sustainable and good-looking urban form, marketisation of sustainability for a competitive edge, and a relational planning approach. Altogether they target mutually supportive benefits from environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness. The findings point out new directions for the City’s strategic development, and suggest a useful reference for counterpart global cities to address the common sustainability paradox.