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

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.