Smart cities, a guiding vision for sustainable urban development? A case study examining the role of expectations and visions in Songdo City

Abstract

It is expected that by 2050, 2.5 billion more people will be living in urban areas. Without proper planning, this will have significant impacts for sustainability. Countries all over the world are planning and creating large-scale top-down cities in order to address the growing global population and to gain the benefits associated with urbanisation. One of the recent trends in this area is the development of smart cities. The articulation of expectations and visions have in the past been identified as an important process in the adoption and acceptance of sustainability experiments. The present study aims to contribute a deeper understanding of the role that the articulation of expectations and visions have in large-scale sustainability experiments. It does this by exploring a case study of Songdo City, a city widely recognised as one of the first smart cities in the world. From its inception, Songdo was strongly articulated to be a major international business hub, later adding sustainability to its expectations and visions. The extent to which these expectations and visions were diffused into reality was examined from the perspectives of residents of the city. In order to explore these processes, individuals involved in the articulation and implementation of Songdo’s expectations and visions, as well as residents currently living in Songdo were interviewed. Residents also completed a survey to support the interview data. The data were analysed in accordance with the expectations and visions literature. This research made three key findings: (1) the articulation of expectations and visions is a critical process to gain support from residents and for drawing in new residents; (2) the stronger and more tangible the articulation of the expectations and visions are, the greater the backlash that results from the divergence of reality from the expectations and visions; and, (3) an overemphasis of the importance of the expectations and visions leads to a neglect of both alternative pathways to success and critical evaluations of the articulated expectations and visions. This research shows that there is a need for city planners to balance the articulation of expectations and visions with the need for future flexibility within the system. It further adds that residents are critical actors within the sustainability experimentation literature, who provide important insights into the acceptance of expectations and visions. Show more