SEOUL South Korea — If Americans are to address a rising tide of urban dysfunction and implement high-tech smart cities, they must focus on the culture of digital citizenship.
That’s the prescription of Park Jung-sook, secretary-general of the World Smart Sustainable Cities Organization, or WeGO, a global association of more than 200 cities.
“Data is the blood of a smart city and data is generated by smart citizens,” Ms. Park said, “so the social contract is more important than ever.”
Adopting technologies may address what more Americans in the country’s greatest cities feel is a worsening quality of life, including rising crime, underpopulated downtowns and declining revenue bases for basic services and security. Smart city analysts say the technology adoption strategies must be systemic rather than simply physical.
“Smart cities are not just master planning,” Ms. Park said. “They are a new culture for humankind.”
She said smart cities demand realistic attitudes toward data collection, pragmatic perspectives toward data use, and an updated series of protocols governing the interfaces among technology, government, business, the individual and society.
Calling smart cities a “kind of choice,” she said, “If citizens don’t supply data, you don’t get a smart city.”
Alluding to anti-mask activists during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ms. Park said, “That is your choice, but you may be left behind, you may become marginalized in your own city — or you may die.”
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
Inner-city America needs help.
Crumbling infrastructure, overpopulation and homelessness, fentanyl epidemics, and disintegrating law and order are just some issues plaguing cities that once were admired worldwide.
A 2022 article in The Atlantic reported that New York, where more than a third of 1 million people live in public housing and a quarter million are on waiting lists, is seeking a jaw-dropping $78 billion to fix its facilities. In Seattle, a poll this year found that 59% of respondents believed their city had declined over the previous three years.
Solutions may lie across the Pacific, where Seoul-based WeGO originated in e-governance.
South Korea, with its educated, urbanized population densely clustered in high-rise apartment complexes, set up a nationwide broadband network in the 1990s. Similar futuristic approaches were pioneered in a slew of mobile service rollouts.
The result: South Koreans became some of the world’s most gadget-friendly, technology-savvy people, and the national government has set a global standard in e-governance. WeGO, with 50 original member cities from around the globe, was founded in the South Korean capital in 2010.
In 2017, WeGo shifted its mission with the recognition that public-private partnerships, rather than just governments, are essential to livable cities, Ms. Park said. The global shutdown and disruptions brought on by COVID-19 forced another shift, underscoring the “importance of integrating resilience in our cities to ensure the well-being of citizens.”
Can these lessons be learned across the Pacific? Many great American urban conglomerations grew to prominence at a very different time.
“New York, Seattle and L.A. were very successful cities in the era of the Third Industrial Revolution,” she said. “But now we have to change our perspective.”
Historians date the Third Industrial Revolution to 1969. It ushered in an era of vastly more powerful telecommunications, electronics and personal computers. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is marked by the digitization and automation of industries, media and societies.
“We have to adapt to new machines and technologies” with related protocols, she said. “This is the basis of society.”
Data and democracy
Data-intensive technologies helped South Korea overcome coronavirus challenges with zero lockdowns and some of the world’s lowest per-capita death tolls from COVID-19. A core tool was an information web that, under emergency laws, could synchronize “big data” drawn from customs information, closed-circuit TV networks, credit card transactions, public transport usage and smartphone location tracking.
Artificial intelligence systems mined this data ocean to find people who had been close to those who were infected. A private-sector messaging app, Kakao, was used to alert tracked citizens to test for COVID.
South Koreans largely did not protest these invasive measures, Ms. Park said. She attributed the acceptance to the nation’s deep roots of democracy and citizens’ trust that the data would not be put to malign uses.
“Voting rights are very important,” she said. “We trust our government and give rights to our leaders, then do our best to be good citizens.”
That approach may be a tougher sell in the United States, with traditional skepticism of central government and intrusions on personal property and liberties. Ms. Park counters that anyone with an online presence has already effectively abandoned control of their data.
“Already, Google has all this information about you,” she said. “You trust Google but won’t give your information to your own country?”
South Korea’s more homogeneous, communal society is different from the diverse, individualistic American model, she said, but a balance must be struck.
“During [the emergence of the pandemic], we realized that digital identity is very important,” she said. “But we have to find our digital rights.”
Elected officials are crucial to building trust.
“I cannot protest against a big company, but over city leaders, I have a voice,” she said. Likewise, social media has granted citizens creative tools and feedback mechanisms that traditional media lacked.
Smart cities, smart citizens
For cities and residents prepared to embrace the Fourth Industrial Revolution, multiple technologies have improved the quality of urban life.
“Smart curtains” are digital drapes that can be chosen from any color or pattern and drawn across windows manufactured of transparent displays. These windows can also replace stand-alone TV screens.
Ms. Park prefers to talk not about specific technologies but the benefits they offer. “We are facing a low birthrate cliff, so the question is how to make houses more comfortable and more convenient for spouses.”
That means building not just traditional public housing but also housing tailored to habitation groups. For example, housing zones for singles need multiple public spaces to enable interactions, including shared laundries and meeting spaces.
As megacities rise, commutes extend and inner-city property prices soar. Decentralization is one answer, she said, noting that Sao Paulo is taking a deep look at expanding remote work and education.
Singapore leads in smart sustainability, she said. Gaps are purposely built into high-rise buildings to reduce heat, and rainwater-collection facilities water plants in the complexes’ public green spaces.
In crime-ridden cities, surveillance cameras are essential but draw complaints about privacy violations. Some British CCTV companies are programmed to blur faces but also deploy AI to recognize violent movements or weapons, enabling swift police responses.
AI embedded in CCTV can calculate numbers of people in spaces, enabling warnings of dangerous overcrowding at public events such as concerts. Related systems in transport terminals allow faster passenger movement around chokepoints.
Cities even take a “smart” approach to waste management. In Tunis, Tunisia, sensors alert authorities when trash cans are full, enabling sanitation workers to plan their routes and pickup times more efficiently.
In Seoul, citizens can rent sustainable transport — public bicycles — via an app. Bike sensors show authorities whether and where bikes are abandoned, enabling efficient collection at night.
Such oversight promotes “ethical citizenship,” Ms. Park said, but she acknowledges the trade-offs of a broader system demanding a “big discourse” — a social compact on digital rights and ethics.
“You need a centralized system, then you can have all these things,” she said. “Smart city! Smart citizens!”
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.