Sharing ideas for smarter cities

Open to global relations

BUT WHEN WE DO COLLABORATE WITH CITIES WITH SHARED ISSUES, WE CAN SOLVE PROBLEMS IN A SMARTER WAY

HOBART’S Lord Mayor is open to exploring new relationships with comparable overseas cities but says it needs broad community support.

The idea of the state developing sister city arrangements with places like, from left, Iceland, New Zealand’s South Island, and Canadian provinces Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and has been floated in research commissioned by the

Mercury as part of its Future Tasmania series.

These places have been suggested due to their demographic and geographic similarities and opportunities to identify shared learnings and experiences.

It has been described as a “low-cost, high impact” idea.

A European island nation, Iceland has an estimated population of about 360,000.

Cr Reynolds said the discussion was timely because a review of Hobart’s existing sister city relationships was underway.

Hobart has two sister cities — Yaizu in Japan, established in 1977, and Italian city L’Aquila, in 1998 – and two recently added friendship cities, Xi’an and Fuzhou, both in China.

Cr Reynolds said she would be interested in considering new options, but said it needed to be done strategically and gain the backing of a range of stakeholders.

“The community has to be supportive of these things otherwise there’s no point,’’ she said.

But Cr Reynolds said she was broadly supportive of the concept of new sister city arrangements, saying “smart cities” were ones which positioned themselves globally.

“They recognise that collaboration globally with likeminded cities will actually bring incredible benefits in terms of innovation and problem-solving together,’’ Cr Reynolds said.

“We don’t have the resources at local government level to solve every problem from scratch, but when we do collaborate with cities with shared issues, we can solve problems in a smarter way.”

Cr Reynolds said she would like to see a broader conversation between council and other levels of government about which overseas cities would be best suited.

“Iceland is a really amazing place, and would probably be a good partner for the Tasmanian Government to work with,’’ she said.

Referencing the research, demographer Bernard Salt suggested officials go on a

“fact-finding mission” to determine ways to apply learnings from similar-sized, like-minded places.

“Tasmania should be benchmarking itself with those provinces and comparing how they operate, what infrastructure they have been able to leverage,’’ he said.

“Tasmania needs to be connecting with like-minded communities that have the same challenges, but have overcome those challenges.

“Equally, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland could learn a hell of a lot about how Tasmanians have done so well out of the Australian federation.”

Launceston has three sister city relationships — Ikeda, Japan (established in 1965), Napa, USA (1988) and Taiyuan, China (1990).

Mayor Albert van Zetten said in 2015, the City of Launceston voted to adopt a new set of criteria for any future sister city relationships.

Cr van Zetten said sister city arrangements had not been structured around direct financial benefit, but the promotion of cultural understanding and the exchange of ideas.

He said council was reviewing its sister city relationships with a focus on more tangible economic and social outcomes.