South Korea’s ‘Smart City’ Songdo: not quite smart enough?

Name: SCMP
Telephone: +852-2680-8888

Promoted as the answer to the ills of modern-day living in Seoul, the development is overdue, overpriced and underpopulated. ‘A Chernobyl-like emptiness’, as one critic puts it

Reading Time:3 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

Chris White

Published: 9:00am, 25 Mar 2018Updated: 3:43pm, 25 Mar 2018

LOOKING wistfully around at the surroundings, a strange mix of marshland and random high-rise buildings, Shim Jong-rae shakes his head, echoing the sentiment of many residents: “It’s a ghost town.”

For more than a decade, urban planners have been studying the construction of Songdo, South Korea, the world’s first Smart City. Built within 25 miles of Seoul, it was to be the antithesis of the suffocating, overpopulated capital. A new way of thinking for more than 300,000 residents, spread out over 600 hectares of reclaimed land from the Yellow Sea.

The brainchild of developers and the government, the vision was to construct a car-free world, with 40 per cent green space and dozens of kilometres of cycling routes.

Most bike racks are empty in the “Smart City” of Songdo, South Korea, which was developed for 300,000 residents. Photo: Chris White

Living here should be paradise. Technology is ubiquitous. There are no trash trucks; rubbish is pneumatically “sucked out” of houses, recycled to generate electricity.

Digitally advanced apartments, with computers built into the streets and condos to control traffic flow and let neighbours hold video chats with each other. Everything can be done remotely, from opening the front door to attending college classes.