Smart city projects that are located under a smart city development plan need to have aligned objectives with the overall city initiatives. However, few smart city projects studies have included smart-sustainable initiatives into application instructions or performance indicators. This situation leads to the question: is the concept of “smart” and “sustainable” unimportant at the project-level, or is it hard to interpret into practice? This chapter uses a qualitative literature review method on related literature to critically examine how the idea of “smart” and “sustainable” is translated from city-level initiatives to project strategy in existing smart city project cases. Mintzberg’s strategy formation pattern serves as a theoretical basis to compare and contrast the existing smart-sustainable project strategy formation. Using Mintzberg’s strategy formation model, the smart and sustainable strategy can be formed in planning mode, adaptive mode, or entrepreneurial mode, based on the governance structure and stakeholders’ conflicting interests. The chapter provides the smart city project managers with new understandings of the project strategy to meet the city-level initiatives.