Kigali, Rwanda - September 21, 2018: a wide view looking down on the city centre with Pension Plaza in the foreground and Kigali City Tower in the background against a backdrop of distant blue hills. Image via Shutterstock/ By Jennifer Sophie
The urban metropolises of our planet are home to an abundance of stories. They are home to stories of wealth, of innovation, and of architectural marvels. They are home, too, to stories of inequality, inequity and of urban divides – places where one’s income determines the quality of the spatial environment around them. Within these stories has developed an increasing advocation for making cities “smarter”, the goal being to use data and digital technology to build more efficient and convenient urban environments.
What does it take to build a smart city from nothing? Or maybe the better question is, what does it take to build a smart city from nothing and make it successful? For over a decade, architects and urban planners worked hand in hand to create Songdo, a brand new business district that sought to represent South Korean advancements in technology and infrastructure. Songdo was once a model for how we would live in cities of the future- but now, the reality of what this smart city quickly became has us rethinking how the combination of technology and community might have gone wrong.
Over the past two decades, new master-planned cities have risen at a pace and scale rarely seen in modern history. Concentrated largely in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, more than 150 such projects are currently underway. For some, these cities are promoted as fast tracks to modernization and a way to leapfrog from resource- or agriculture-dependent economies into knowledge-driven ones. For others, they are strategic showcases, designed to attract global attention, foreign capital, and prestige. By packaging urbanization itself as an investment opportunity, these projects promise to stimulate growth and reposition nations within the global economy—all through the act of building anew.
According to Forbes, "The new city building movement that we are currently in the middle of is one of the most under the radar and most misinterpreted social and economic developments happening in the world today". What often escapes scrutiny, however, is not only the architecture of these projects, but the governance model they advance.
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