Smart Cities Seoul: A Case Study

Officially “Seoul Special City”, Seoul is the capital of South Korea and the country’s largest metropolis with a population of over 10 million people. Having hosted the Olympic Games, the FIFA World Cup, and 2010’s
G-20 summit, Seoul is world renowned as both a highly-advanced economy and leading tourist destination.

Seoul is however best known as one of the most tech-savvy cities in the world, retaining its No.1 ranking in the UN e-Government Survey since 2003, and creating a true world-first in the PC-gaming equivalent of
the Olympic Games, The World Cyber Games. Smart Seoul 2015 was announced in June 2011 to uphold Seoul’s reputation as a global ICT leader by boosting its sustainability and competitiveness through smart technologies.

Strictly speaking, Smart Seoul is not Korea’s first attempt to incorporate ICT in city-development strategies. In 2004, Korea initiated the u-City project whereby ubiquitous computing technologies were applied to
strengthen cities’ competitiveness. The smart city achievable today differs fundamentally however, in that today there are ways to
simultaneously enhance a city’s sustainability, competitiveness and citizen happiness. A smart city emphasizes the continued maintenance, protection, reinforcement and regeneration of its attractiveness in
the future no less than it prioritizes its short-term competitive edge.
Smart Seoul 2015 was adopted to overcome the limitations of u-Seoul which applied ICTs only to existing ‘traditional’ city infrastructure. u-Seoul improved the delivery of services such as transportation and safety,
but failed to produce material improvements in the quality of life enjoyed by Seoul’s citizens.

Smart Seoul 2015 is a more people-oriented or human-centric project; and Seoul now aims to implement as many smart technologies as possible, but also to create a more collaborative relationship between the city and its citizens.