SOUTH KOREA’S AMAZING ‘SMART CITY’ INITIATIVES: What India needs to learn With Shri Narendra Modi’s government announcing its plan to establish 100 Smart Cities across India, the concept has caught the imagination of people in our country. There is an urgent need for a broadbased and well-informed public debate on this important new initiative. In order to broaden my own knowledge of this subject, I decided to make the best use of my current stay in South Korea, a country that is implementing some of the smartest ideas in building new cities, and making its existing cities, people-friendly and eco-friendly. How hi-tech South Korea is, can be gauged from a single fact: at 1 gbps -- yes, 1 gbps! --, it boasts of the FASTEST INTERNET SPEED IN THE WORLD. Today I visited the Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements (KRIHS), which is South Korea’s leading think tank on urban regeneration with 300 researchers who are generously funded by the government. It formulates long-term national and regional development plans for South Korea (urban population: 80%). I was warmly received by Dr. Songsu Choi, who has worked with World Bank for over 20 years as Lead Urban Economist and is now Senior Advisor, KRIHS; Dr. Chung Il-ho, Senior Research Fellow, KRIHS; Dr. Kwang lk Wang, an expert at KRIHS working on Green Cities; Dr. Ahn Yongjin, who is a researcher with the Global Development Partnership Center at KRIHS; and Dr. Jae-Yoon Yoo, head of the Center for Urban Regeneration Policy at KRIHS. The KRIHS team made highly educative presentations on -- (a) Sustainable Development practices in Korean cities; (b) New paradigm in urban planning (with focus on people and not on short-term profits, and on a comprehensive approach involving livelihoods, community development, culture, art, leisure, recreation and crime-free environment, rather than merely on physical construction of buildings and infrastructure); (c) Heritage preservation; (d) Cleanliness (South Korea is next only to Japan in keeping its cities clean); and (e) to my surprise, a plan for the Sustainable Development of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), for which KRIHS is providing consultancy to MMRDA. I invited Dr. Chung Il-ho, who is working on the Mumbai project and will be coming to Mumbai next month, to visit the Observer Research Foundation and deliver a talk on SMART CITY INITIATIVES IN SOUTH KOREA. --- Here are a few highlights of how South Korea is making its cities smarter: 1) Songdo International Business District is coming up as one of the worlds smartest cities. Located in the Incheon Free Economic Zone, it aspires to grow into a global Asian city like Hong Kong or Singapore. Nearly half of Songdo will be green space, including rooftop vegetation to help cool the city. It will have a futuristic waste management system. No dump trucks, no trash bags. Waste from every home or office is directly -- pneumatically - sent to a waste processing center. There, food waste is used for agricultural purposes, and most of the rest of waste (including water) is recylcled. Sensors embedded in streets and buildings enable the city to run efficiently and react to potential disaster situations quickly. 2) Geomdan Newtown and Magok District Smart City are aspiring to become ZERO-ENERGY -- that is, they will generate on their own all the energy they need, including energy from sewage treatment. 3) An All-Source Intelligence Centre in Seoul, which is manned by only 8 persons, has brought down crime rate by 14.7% and arrests by 25.3% in a single year. 4) For South-Korea, the push for Smart Cities and Green Growth is highly necessary because the country imports 97 percent of its energy. It is investing heavily in renewable energy sources. 5) South-Korea has been developing smart grid systems with an ambitious target of reducing the CO2 level by 30% by 2020.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 11:36:37 +0000
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