Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

A Model Korean Ubiquitous Eco-City? The Politics of Making Songdo

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 20; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10630732.2012.735409

1466-1853

Sofia T. Shwayri,

Asian Culture and Media Studies

Abstract Building cities from scratch has continued unabated since the latter half of the twentieth century despite some of these planned cities achieving global infamy for their failures. These endeavors are, in part, due to a persistent belief by governments that newly constructed cities can set their nations on a fast path to the future. Today, challenges posed both by global climate change and increased urbanization have widened this platform from projects almost exclusively of developing nations to include those in the developed world. Today we talk of the eco-city, a local solution to a global crisis. If completion is successfully fast-tracked, the resultant eco-city will position its respective nation at the forefront of innovation in what is effectively a global race: the resultant city can be exported as a model both locally and globally. In this regard, the envisioning and building of Songdo in South Korea may not be unique. Songdo is a city underway on flat land created from wetland reclamation. As part of the Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ), Songdo's development has benefited from opportunistic circumstances that has led to its pursuit of becoming a “Ubiquitous Eco-City.” The green infrastructure of the new city is to be enhanced by the provision of extra services that combine information and communication technologies as well as digital networks to ideally create harmony among the environment, society, and technology. Songdo, as planned, will position South Korea among a group of leading nations, and possibly at the forefront of new city development, potentially producing a model for export. Keywords: Eco-CityUbiquitousDevelopmentPublic-Private PartnershipFree Economic ZoneSongdoIncheonSouth Korea Acknowledgment The fieldwork for this paper was conducted over a two-year period in Songdo. I thank Seoul National University for the Research Settlement Fund for New Faculty and my research assistant Ms Heejoo Lee for her assistance in examining the Korean sources and organizing and conducting the interviews. Notes See Accessed July 3, 2012. See Accessed July 11, 2012. See < http://www.songdo.com/songdo-international-business-district/why-songdo/a-brand-new-city.aspx> Accessed July 11, 2012. A slightly modified version of the quote on page 13 is mentioned in Segel, 2005.