Smart, Sustainable "Insta-Cities": A Korean Prototype

On October 31, the world’s population hit the 7 billion mark. Put another way, the earth gained one billion new inhabitants since 1999 - a mere 12 years! (Jeffrey Sachs, CNN). In an era of rapid population growth and the rapid urbanization of the world (people are moving to cities at a faster rate than to rural areas/suburban), some parts of the world find themselves needing more cities—and FAST. China, for example, is building at a staggering pace – a new city “the equivalent to Rome every few weeks” (Greg Lindsay, Departures Magazine).

So what are developers and the technology industry doing to make these new, almost “pre-fab” cities sustainable?

A rendering of harborview, songdo.com



Enter Korea’s Songdo International Business District. Built in partnership with the Korean Government, developer Gale International and Cisco Systems, this brand new city is unfurling itself on land reclaimed from the Yellow Sea. When completed (in roughly 2016), Songdo will be the size of Boston, ready for one million or more residents. Songdo will be a cutting-edge “smart city” with everything from trunk lines to lighting fixtures wired to collect data that will enable companies and residents to monitor and control virtually every piece of urban infrastructure--including water and electricity. This city is to be a prototype of a “city in a box” that will be replicated twenty times in China and India in the coming years. (Greg Lindsay, Fast Company)

Are “insta-cities” all that they’re cracked up to be? The international urban planning community has mixed feelings about the benefits of new “intelligent” cities.

Artist's rendering, Songdo.com

On the one hand, the ability to monitor utilities and infrastructure is a planner’s dream. They can get data on who is using what amount of water and when. This can help officials plan for future water needs – like using the data to determine appropriate water storage for warmer summer months, for example. Much like a home energy or water audit, residents can also analyze the current trends and create plans for reducing their use or the severity of their impact. For example, they could learn that their daily showers are expending more water than they prefer, or notice that if they wash their laundry at night during off-peak hours they can get a lower rate. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is partnering with Opower and Facebook to create a smart phone application that will enable residents to analyze their energy usage in real-time (Katherine Tweed, Greentech Media). A wired city could have even greater impacts on our lives. According to the BBC, “Residents will have smart phones they can use to pay their bills, access medical records or just open their doors.”

On the other hand, however, some fear that the “smart city” technology could throw more wrinkles into an already complex urban system than create beneficial returns. Even Gordon Falconer, Director of Innovation at Cisco, stated in an interview that “Possible disadvantages are allowing the “smart” components to over ride everything else.” Presumably he is referring to free will or other social, economic or environmental considerations/priorities that run “counter to the meter,” so to speak. It could also make city infrastructure vulnerable to program viruses or hacking.

Some are concerned that such concentration of information in the hands of the government or, in particular, private corporations, could create a “big brother” effect. Note that during the interview, Mr. Falconer suggests that “Government should be a facilitator, policy maker and a regulator of smart cities while ICT companies and private sector developers/operators should do the actual design and construction and operation” (emphasis added). 

Kaid Benfield, Director of Sustainable Communities and Smart Growth at the Natural Resources Defense Council, cautions against a “gizmo cities” focus – where some superficial ideas like monitoring and manipulating data on underlying urban infrastructure – is misconstrued with the hard work of building holistic, truly sustainable cities (Kaid Benfield, featured on Grist Magazine).

The good news is that Songdo doesn’t seem to be the kind of “gimmicky” project that Benfield decries. The Songdo District has been designed to follow best practices in urban sustainability, and is participating in the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Neighborhood Design program. For starters, Songdo’s “Third party development land sale agreements will contain language mandating that buildings erected must pursue LEED Certification.” (Songdo website)



Songdo IBD by Flikr user my memory2

Emphasizing six core sustainability areas of open space, transportation, water, energy use, recycling and general operations, Songdo is shaping up to be an impressive exercise in sustainability. For example: it will preserve 40% of its area for natural open space, and the city offers a 100 acre Central Park. With 25 kilometers of bicycle paths, a subway line into Incheon, most of its parking underground and prime parking set aside for electric and low-emissions vehicles, Songdo prioritizes the right kind of transportation. The city will use efficient appliances, reclaimed stormwater, reused greywater and green roofs to minimize its water usage.

Songdo already has 35,000 residents, and progress is steady on a 68-story, 1,001-foot residential tower that will become the tallest building in Korea.

Learning from the Past: Balancing Preservation and Urbanization

...quit thinking abut decent land-use as solely an economic problem. Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise....This is a plea for the preservation of some tag-ends of wilderness, as museum pieces, for the edification of those who may one day wish to see, feel, or study the origins of their cultural inheritance. (The Land Ethic from A Sand County Almanac, 1949)

Aldo Leopold - US Forest Service

Aldo Leopold, a behemoth of the conservation movement, was born in 1887.  Leopold attended Yale University's School of Forestry and joined the US Forest Service when the Service was just four years old. During his life he advocated for what would become the first designated wilderness area in the world and wrote countless books, such as the famous A Sand County Almanac, about preserving and living in ecological harmony with the land rather than using it merely as a disposable economic resource.

"...I am glad that I shall never be young without wild country to be young in" said Leopold, bemoaning the destruction of nature, however necessary it may have been for America's early settlers. In the 60 years since his death, that trend of destruction has only continued. Many of us have, in fact, grown up in an era where wilderness was only occasionally experienced during a family vacation - a camping trip or a weekend at a rented cabin.

How can we inspire a new generation to care for nature and promote open space?

Urbanization and its discontents

Don't freak out, but...we are overpopulating the world to a severe degree, and urbanization won't save us!

This is the view of Kingsley Davis, a pioneer of historical urban demography and world urbanization, in his 1965 Scientific America piece "The Urbanization of the Human Population." He explains that "urbanization" is a term that describes not merely the growth, in population, of cities--but a relative change between the urban and rural (read: farming) population. Thus, just because a city's population is growing does not mean that more people are migrating from the country into cities (urbanization).

Davis goes over the history of urbanization in Northwest Europe (urbanization began to support trade and economic production) and the "S-curve" theory of urbanization (urbanization starts off slow and then increases rapidly as economic incentives from prospering city industries continue to increase, and then tapers off as overcowding and the availability of automobiles and other conveniences encourages people to move into suburban areas).

Davis also addresses the misplaced anxiety of leaders in underdeveloped nations that a severe rural-urban migration is underway. While it is true that developing countries are becoming urbanized at a slightly faster rate than those of the 19th century (about 5%), the overall growth of their cities can't be predominantly explained by urbanization.



Greenberg, Seattle Post Intelligence, 1994

 Rather, absolute population growth via births and increased life expectancy in these countries is causing a steep increase in both urban AND rural populations. This puts countries between a rock and a hard place. Davis states that "If they do not substantially step up the exodous from rural areas, these areas will be swamped with underemployed farmers. If they do step up the exodous, cities will grow at a disasterous rate."

His final warning, or thesis statement, is stern: "It seems plain that the only way to stop urban crowding and to solve most of the urban problems besetting both the developed and underdeveloped nations is to reduce the overall rate of population growth...Urban planners continue to treat population growth as something to be planned for, not something to be itself planned."

Retrofitting "Trashed" Land into Benefical Community Space

Oasis appears
Decay now gives way to growth
Nature rejoices
-Louis J. Lombardo[1]

On a hot day last month, my husband and I happened upon a hidden oasis in Daegu, Korea: the Daegu Arboretum. We strolled through the park, which featured 230,000 square meters of gardens and greenhouses, including a cactus greenhouse, a bog garden, an herb garden and a picnic area. It was bustling with children and adults alike, all enjoying the space and their ability to connect more closely with nature.

Map of Daegu Arboretum. Photo by Jace Lee.

The arboretum, while a splendid refuge for city residents, also holds a deeper significance: the park is built on a large landfill that was in operation from 1986-1990. It was converted into civic space by city government. This project, which opened in 2002, is part of a growing trend in cities across the world.


You don’t have to go far from Daegu to see other successful landfill retrofits. Once known for its flowers and as a site to grow vegetables, the small island of Najido in the Han River near Seoul became a landfill site in the 1970s. As the repository for the trash coming from a growing city, the site quickly expanded into a mountain of trash said to be 34 times the size of the Pyramids of Giza. After the landfill was closed in 1993, the City of Seoul installed 100 methane gas extraction wells to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help power the city. The 2002 World Cup brought renewed interest in redesigning Najido into an eco-friendly island. 2.8 million Square meters of former landfill were transformed into five differently themed parks. Today, the successful World Cup Park sees 9.8 million visitors a year. 

Asian Green City Index Highlights Opportunities for Improvement

Seoul, by Hyunwoo Sun

Earlier this year, a major report was published by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) that dug into current trends among major cities in Asia.  In the Asian Green City Index, the EIU looked at 22 Asian cities (capitals and other leading business centers) and compared them against each other in key areas of environmental performance. Each city received both an overall ranking and a breakdown of what contributed to their scores in each key area. The following data from one city, Seoul, demonstrates what the study highlights.

The report, sponsored by Siemens, concluded that Seoul ranked “above average” (receiving a score of 4 out of 5), and shares this distinction with Hong Kong, Osaka, Taipei, Tokyo and Yokohama. The city of Singapore was the only city to achieve the score of “well above average.”

Seoul, the third most densely populated city in the study, ranked well in areas of energy and carbon dioxide, transportation, water, land use and buildings, sanitation and environmental governance. Seoul was lauded for having one of the best transportation networks of buses and subways, and for having minimal water leakage problems coupled with one of the highest rates of access to sanitation and wastewater treatment. The City is also at the top of the class (compared to cities with similar income levels) for low carbon dioxide emissions and high energy efficiency.

Seoul Traffic, by JimTheGiantEagle

However, the study revealed that “[Seoul] produces the most waste among all 22 cities in the Index, at an estimated 996 kg per person per year, well above the Index average of 375 kg.” Seoul also only scored “average” on its air quality because of the amount of nitrogen dioxide emissions. “It has the second highest concentration of this pollutant in the Index, at 71 micrograms per cubic metre, compared to the average of 47 micrograms. This is due to Seoul’s over-reliance on cars — automobiles are a main source of nitrogen dioxide — and they are responsible for almost three quarters of Seoul’s air pollution.” Seoul also boasts less green space than the study’s average.

The report highlighted figures from the United Nations and the Asian Development Bank revealing that Asian cities are becoming more concentrated as people migrate to urban centers (over the last five years over 100,000 residents moved to Asian cities every day). Overall, the study sought to determine the environmental strength of these leading cities and offer areas for improvement.