Songdo and the smart urbanism
Blog intervention pour le cours “Contemporary Urbanism: roots, crisis and interventions”, Novembre 2016
Songdo is a business district built in the suburban area of Seoul, administratively linked to the Incheon municipality; it is 11km away from the Incheon airport and 65km from Seoul. The land that was allocated to the project is 610 hectares wide, and the initiative was implemented by a public-private partnership. A private consortium allocated 35 billion dollars for the project, which started in 2001. Gale International, an american real-estate investment fund, holds 61% of the shares. The south korean steel leader Posco possesses 30%, while the 9% shares remaining are Morgan Stanley’s. Several phases from 2003 to 2015 entailed the construction of the entire business district from scratch. Inhabitants started to settle. In 2010 they were 34,000, but 200,000 more need yet to arrive by 2018 for the city to meet forecasts.
This tentative of spatial solution, including hospitals, schools, offices and common housing as well as parks, ought to address the issue of Seoul’s urban growth. But not only. As an implemented smart city project, Songdo is thus one crucial example of the smart urbanism initiatives that were lately developed.
A large pannel of ideas that framed the problem when dealing with the planning intervention
The planning intervention is framed by several ideas. In 2016, a paper written by Luque and Marvin tried to highlight the fact that smart urbanism is often defined as “a futuristic solution brought to the present to deal with a broad multiplicity of urban maladies, including issues of transport congestion, resource limitation, climate change and even the need to expand democratic access, amongst others.” The paper then pointed out: “As evidenced by the analysis of multiple other design-based and techno-utopian interventions in urban systems, such as grid-based infrastructures (Graham and Marvin, 1996, 2001; Hughes, 1983; Nye, 1999), modernist urban planning (Sandercock, 1998) and new urbanism (Harvey, 1997), the urban plays a critical role in shaping, translating, and contesting the desired — and often failed — transformation.”
Smart urbanism clearly framed the Songdo’s preparation process. Through a public-private partnership, the project’s aim was based on the conviction that monitoring human actions through measures and data is not only possible, but desirable. The data collection and treatment forming an instrument of control over populations as well as infrastructures — like public transportation infrastructures for example — are thus likely to prevent transport congestion or likely to lead to the development of good practices toward the environment. Those good practices confers the power of ubiquity and objectivity to a sociotechnical system and legitimates the exclusion of human supposed subjectivity. In fine, making the city more fluid, inclusive, and sustainable are the top-listed achievements — at least, required objectives.
In this context, the optimisation of the city services through technological infrastructures and big data allow public authorities to minimise or even avoid risks. As a reputedly averse to risk-taking society, the south korean society was the ideal recipient to conceive and build the first smart city, beyond the common aspects of territorial branding and marketing that can now be found among the majority of smart city initiatives.
Technologies, as a driver for change, shape the everyday life. The production of personal behaviour incentives provides a direct filiation to some utopian urban planning projections — from the beginning of Greek planning theories to Le Corbusier — that would in a way lead empowerment of individuals and common good through hygiene and security. On the contrary in the philosophical theories, one could also refer to some foucauldian works upon biopower theories.
Mobilizing world’s best resources for a green Songdo: knowledge and measures
In order to respond to the ambitions fixed by the municipality, and to justify massive investments, the city leant on key metrics and state-of-the-art architectural and technical savoir-faire. Inspirations came from the allegedly most beautiful cities in the world: Songdo gathers parisian-like grands boulevards, water canals from Venice used as paths for water taxis, and even a new-yorker park around which the city is articulated. The lack of references to a south korean city planning knowledge is enhanced by the work of Kohn Pedersen Fox, a famous architect and a skyscrapers specialist.
The development of a smart city discourse and smart city material skills is accompanied along with the implementation of worldwide top companies: Cisco implemented a tech lab conceived as a showcase for other metropolis to appeal the company for internet networks in future public procurements. Veolia tested a new water supply network, Samsung Biologics is about to install the largest biopharmaceutical factory. From a UN perspective, the Green Climate Funds already settled its headquarters in Songdo, promoting thus the deep involvement of the smart city in reducing its carbon footprint.
Indeed, 40% of the city ground coverage is dedicated to green spaces. Each city spot is accessible within a 15 minutes walk, so that it fosters soft mobilities. The underground do not not reject CO2 emissions and buildings are topped with planted roofs. Unique designs for rainwater harvesting and to recycle the waste allow the inhabitants to recycle 100% of the waste, through a distributed pipelines system that directly reaches the treatment centre. The flats are all equipped with house automation systems, enabling the inhabitants to manage their energy consumption with high precision. In order to adapt inhabitants’s behaviour, consumption pageants are monthly organised: the prize consists of a one-month gym subscrption. Flat screens ensure high-level safety features as well as private lessons or even medical surveillance.
A specific economic context that urged the municipality to act
From an economic point of view, the planning intervention states the clear ambition of the south korean government to turn the country into a key asian hub nearby China, Japan and countries from the Southern Asia. Songdo permits to reach one of the core world economic champion within 2 hours. The Incheon airport constitutes a competitive advantage and arguably contributed to the site choice of the Songdo district. Songdo’s strategic location embodies korean willingness to exist in the world urban integration. Besides, Songdo disposes of a taxation arsenal thanks to the Incheon free zone attracting global companies.
Some elements of critique
The architects did optimized the ground coverage and the city density, yet they seem to have failed their social inclusion purpose. Industrial activities were relegated to and polluting factories displaced on the edge of the city. From this point of view, the planning intervention does not address the entire population needs whereas smart urbanism is often presented as a collection of smart logics that configures space. Following Wigg (2013), we think it is essential to start “discussing the broad ways in which smart urbanism projects relate to urban form” since smart urbanism is likely to develop itself apart from any socio-cultural context: smart planning seeks to be transversal by essence. The urban form programmation would then tend to shape the urban life itself. Going further, we think that it may be changing the conditions of cities and especially the conditions of the public realm, to the extent that controls over population through big data and its sensory capabilities (Klauser and Albrechtslund, 2014; Thrift, 2014a, 2014b) would potentially have an impact on our free will. The cost of delegating our political power is never as high as when we think that our sociotechnical systems are deprived of subjectivity (subjectivity depicted in Latour’s works in the scientific and technical fields), which may be the ultimate paradox when we reckon the intentional basis of smart urbanism: individual empowerment.