A Smart City as an Infrastructural Future Platform for Enhanced Quality of Life: A Story from South Korea

• In Event: “Smart Infrastructure” as Relational Practice: Cities, Nations and Corporate Strategies in Framing Future Cities

Abstract

This paper discusses the intersections between technology and the city with a case study of smart city initiatives and practices in South Korea. Based on public data, in-depth interviews, and casual conversations with participating actors in smart city projects at the national and local levels, the paper interrogates the situated meanings of smart city in the national contexts. The paper departs from straightforward questions: what smart city means to a diverse range of social actors and how different understandings are sorted out to implement smart city projects? Can a smart city, as envisioned, serve as spaces of hope for all future citizens?

In recent years ‘smart city’ has been a buzzword to captivate many national governments around the globe, and South Korea is not an exception. The South Korea government set smart city initiatives as a national agenda to enhance citizens’ quality life. They refer to inclusive innovations of cities from multiple levels such as technologies, management, services, governance, regulation, a way of life, citizenship. With human-centric approaches to the city as opposed to techno-centric methods, the government aims to build an integrative, data-based, infrastructural platform that can the city into a space of experimentation and spaces of hope for all citizens. To unravel the complex relations between the smart city and technology, the paper first examines the national government’s model smart city projects and then pays close attention to a smart city project that has been led by a multidisciplinary smart city research center situated at the university.

Author

• Eunjeong Ma, Pohang University of Science and Technology