LiveableandSustainable? Socio-Technical Challenges for Twenty-First-Century Cities

Australian cities rate high internationally on liveability and well-being indices. State and metropolitan governments are keen to promote the liveability of their cities as a means of attracting mobile capital, skilled labor, and tourists. An examination of the liveability-environmental sustainability nexus, however, suggests that Australia's capital cities have gained their high liveability ratings as a result of having inputs of high, and now unsustainable, levels of resource consumption—indirectly into their built environments and directly into their households. This paper explores the prospects for a socio-technical transition of key urban infrastructure systems—energy, water, waste, transport, communications and buildings—as a basis for winding back unsustainable levels of consumption while maintaining liveability.