The Ubiquitous City

I've been hearing this term thrown around quite a bit at work - almost as much as "livable cities" - but truth be told, until now, I have had no idea what it meant. I've tried to ask people but inevitably each time they just give up trying to explain it. So, with a few spare moments today, I ventured to figure it out. Sure enough, it's a handful - maybe I would do better to defer to my sources to explain it, but I'll do my best... First, a bit of background - Here at KRIHS, we're giving urban utopia the old college try with four main concepts. The interesting part is that three of these concepts/projects are devoted almost entirely to the construction of new cities, virtually from scratch. It's a phenomenon built largely on the changing settlement patterns of people in Korea (and worldwide for that matter). People move away from myriad small towns in rural areas that were built over the centuries around agriculture, mining, fishing, etc. and into the big cities. The little towns, starved of their people and the industries that sustained them, disappear, and the cities experience uncontrolled growth as the best efforts at "smart" planning get tossed aside in the scramble to create space. It's like urging everyone to "just stay calm" in the face of a hurricane. I think I've mentioned before that the country has transformed massively in the past 25 years or so - but from the looks of it, this is only the beginning...

So after learning a few tough lessons the first time around, the government is going ahead with a few rather ambitious ideas. They're the kind of ideas that mostly just get played out in the shadowy reality of Sim City back home - but here, they're actually happening. One is the "new administrative city," a project that will move most of the federal government from Seoul to an entirely new city 100 or so miles away to the southwest - like what the Brazilians did with Brasilia when the government was moved from Rio. A hugely controversial project, it's part of a greater plan to re-distribute the population, and thus economic power, away from Seoul, which continues to be overwhelmed with relentless growth. Another concept that aims to do the same is the "innovative city" project, which involves building new cities around key regional industries, which the government deems to be important. New factories will be built, as will R&D centers, and quasi-public institutions; the intention is to create self-sustaining regional cities that keep people in these regions. Third is the enterprise city - similiar to the previous but with development led by the private sector. The final part of the equation is the livable city, the project I work on, but I'll save that topic for an undetermined time far off into the future when I've figured out what a livable city actually is...

Ok - still here? So the ubiquitous city could be applied to any of the above - but it's really its own animal. Called U-City for short, and U-Life for the lifestyle it presupposes, it's a ground-up city where everything is connected via wireless and RFID technology. As it's presently conceptualized, the 300,000 or so U-City residents will all have smart cards that function as the key to their house, subway pass, credit card, etc; data is shared uber-efficiently between government, medical providers, and business; elderly residents will have pressure-sensitive floors that can immediately detect a fall and call for help; RFID anonymously (you can only hope) tracks the flow, the creation, consumption, and ultimate demise of everything, right down to the coke bottle you casually toss into the recycle bin. At first glance it's just some sort of futuristic, some might say scary, mad scientist-planner dream - but the kicker is that it's already being built (it's called New Songdo City), to the tune of $25B on a 1500 acre man-made island off the west coast of Korea.

All of this is just one part of why I think Asian cities are going to be fascinating places to watch from afar in the next few years - I don't think a lot of this could happen back home, for a number reasons. Of course, personally I enjoy the things more on the human level - the seemingly endless array of bars, restaurants, game rooms, coffee shops, noraebangs, and who knows what else hides in the confines of the neon-sign plastered buildings; the parks where you can spot people picnicking under the trees at 10 PM; the infinitely geniality and generosity that I've encountered in everyone I've met here.

And as much as U-city might sound like just another step closer to some kind of Big-Brother is everywhere Orwellian future, to Koreans I think it's seen as an opportunity to experiment, to be part of something new and exciting (apartments in the new city are already selling fast) - which is what life is like in Korea is all about anyway, constantly changing, for better or for worse. At the center of it all is this common identity, shared history, customs, and last names (a half dozen probably cover 95% percent of the population) - but at the same time this drive to evolve their country in completely new ways through these sorts of grand experiments...which is hard for me to understand sometimes because tradition is such a big part of what is a very complex culture here. Which is also why I take some comfort in knowing that hopefully the best parts of this tradition will be preserved, however the country evolves through U-Life or otherwise.

As I've seen already, I don't recognize a thing from my life here 23 years ago, but the people, and what I love about them, have remained, somewhat reassuringly, a constant.