How Has Cambodia Defined Sustainable Urban Development? The Influence of Regional and Global Urban Agendas on Local Practices

As a member state of ASEAN and the UN, Cambodia has adopted and implemented both regional and global urban agendas, resulting in various national urban initiatives, such as clean, green, sustainable, and smart cities. These different national initiatives confused urban researchers and stakeholders in Cambodia, including implementing agencies at the provincial and district levels. Hence, this paper explored this issue by addressing the questions: how has Cambodia defined sustainable urban development, and how have regional and global urban agendas influenced local implementations of sustainable urban planning, development, and management? For its analysis, this paper obtained data on clean, green, sustainable, and smart cities from the ministries of tourism, environment, urban planning, and interior, respectively. The findings revealed that Cambodia has defined sustainable urban development differently from time to time, as influenced by regional and global agendas. The following are the influential agendas from time to time: ASEAN ESC resulted in a clean city contest in 2012; GGGI Urban Green Growth resulted in a green city program in 2014; UN SDG11 resulted in a sustainable city framework in 2016; and ASEAN SCN resulted in a smart city network in 2018. Even though these different initiatives provided some benefits and opportunities for different sectors, this paper suggests consolidating them into one framework to reduce confusion at local implementations and linking their similar goals with budget plans or joint funding to improve efficiency and effectiveness.