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Citizens’ Acceptance of U-Life Services in the Ubiquitous City Songdo

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Citizen’s Right to the Digital City

Abstract

As prototypical cities of the twenty-first century, “smart” and “ubiquitous” cities (u-cities) are planned and constructed all over the world. A paradigmatic example of a u-city built from scratch is Songdo in South Korea. U-cities are concerned with the application of the Internet of Things (IoT) in all spaces of the city—including households (with u-life services integrated in the apartments). A crucial aspect of newly built u-cities is the urbanity as it is perceived by the citizens. Our two leading research questions are as follows: Do Songdo’s citizens really accept the u-life services as parts of their households (as the centers of their private lives)? Do Songdo’s inhabitants recognize this new city as “urban?” The making of Songdo is highly dependent on political decisions and on the activities of the construction and the ICT companies, but not on the people living in Songdo. How is it possible to integrate the people, i.e., the actual and future inhabitants, into planning activities of further development of the u-city? We argue that participatory urbanism is in need of survey tools to collect the citizens’ opinions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Science, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Aylin Ilhan, Rena Möhlmann & Wolfgang G. Stock

Authors
  1. Aylin Ilhan
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  2. Rena Möhlmann
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  3. Wolfgang G. Stock
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Correspondence to Aylin Ilhan .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Urban Informatics Research Lab, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Marcus Foth

  2. Participatory IT Centre, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Martin Brynskov

  3. Computer Science and Engineering, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Timo Ojala

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Ilhan, A., Möhlmann, R., Stock, W.G. (2015). Citizens’ Acceptance of U-Life Services in the Ubiquitous City Songdo. In: Foth, M., Brynskov, M., Ojala, T. (eds) Citizen’s Right to the Digital City. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-919-6_12

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