South Korea lays out the blueprint for smart city projects
The latest Projecting the Future challenge paper explores how smart cities, urbanisation and connectivity are becoming a reality, a mega change that changes how project professionals work in the world. A research project undertaken by Intralink outlined South Korea’s approach to smart city projects, and how effective they’ve been so far. Intralink gave us an exclusive early look at their report.
South Korea has grown into a diverse, tech-driven economy in just 60 years, from a simple, agricultural base. As a nation, it has been so driven towards progress that it’s hardly surprising that it’s leading the way when it comes to smart cities.
It started with the U-City (ubiquitous city) project in the 2000s – a fairly successful attempt at integrating ICT-based services within its cities. A five-year U-City master plan was issued in 2009 along with £332m in funding for the project. Once that project was completed, the South Korean government launched its smart cities initiative.
Power to the cities
Smart cities are complicated projects, often involving a project team compiled of workers from a combination of public and private sector organisations. South Korea’s 2018 Act on the Promotion of Smart City Development and Industry (or the Smart City Act for short) gives an ‘open-ended’ definition of smart cities: “consisting of interconnected services and facilities that
improve competitiveness and quality of life.”
As Intralink’s report states: “This definition gives significant power to individual cities and projects to determine key components and themes, effectively making smart city initiatives a fluid platform for the delivery of diverse connected services.”
Three different projects
The smart cities programme in South Korea basically breaks down into three kinds of national projects: pilot projects, R&D validation projects and urban regeneration projects.
Two cities, Busan and Sejong City, were selected for pilot projects, selected from 39 candidate cities by the Smart Cities Special Committee within the Presidential Commission on the Fourth Industrial Revolution (PCFIR). These were the pilot projects that would set the blueprint for what was to come.
Sejong’s project was concentrated in a 2.7km2 area in the 5-1 residential district, in the north east of the city. The development will create 9,000 new households with a population of around 23,000 residents once completed. “In the smart city, we want to push for a human-oriented and multi-mobility-centred city that uses twenty-first-century technology to increase the sustainability of the city and the happiness of its citizens,” said Dr Jaeseung Jeong, master planner for Sejong 5-1 Smart City.
The Busan smart city project, called Eco-Delta City, will centre around a development of around 2.2km2, with some components spread across a wider 11.8km2 area. Both pilot projects are led by public corporations: LH Corporation in Sejong and K-Water in Busan. Two public corporations have been set up to manage the projects – LH Corporation in Sejong, and K-Water in Busan.
Budget and timelines
The South Korean government set aside £3bn for the pilot projects in Sejong City and Busan, both of which involve major construction works. More than half of this money – around £1.8bn – is public. The rest will come from private investment. The projects were announced in 2018, with a 2021 completion date.
The government funding is restricted for use in developing certain services as part of the smart cities project, including autonomous vehicles and smart health services. Developers are responsible for basic infrastructure.
Almost half of an £18m investment fund is earmarked for companies developing specific technologies, such as digital ‘twins’ of the cities, data analytics platforms and control centres, and a citywide IoT network. “Another GBP 3.8m in funding is directed towards the development of services related to mobility, healthcare, education, energy, environment, and safety.”
By splitting the budget into more manageable parts and ringfencing them for specific elements of these projects, it makes the costs easier to manage.
Managing the projects
The Sejong City and Busan projects are broken into four verticals: mobility, energy, infrastructure and education and healthcare. These projects are seeking vendors to provide and help implement each element – both domestic and overseas.
Mobility services are set to be deployed first in the Sejong project. This will include door-to-door transportation solutions for residents using autonomous vehicles. These will be powered by both hydrogen and electricity.
The mobility phase of the project also includes ‘last-mile’ solutions, such as electric scooters. Car and ride-sharing is also a big part of the project. Sejong has a goal of achieving a two-thirds reduction in the number of cars used per capita by 2040.
Busan is using hydrothermal power generation for its Eco-Delta City. A 122,000-square-metre Geothermal Energy Cluster, including a hydrothermal generation plant, will use water from the Nakdong River and Pyeonggang Stream to increase the energy independence of the Eco-Delta City.
These projects are extremely complicated, broken down into lots of smaller sub-projects and overseen by one corporation and project lead. These kinds of projects are being replicated in cities across the UK – but South Korea may be leading the way.