South Korea’s $35-billion Songdo smart city, built on 1,500 acres of land reclaimed from the Yellow Sea, sits a mere 35 miles west of the capital Seoul. Songdo International Business District (IBD) borrows from iconic cities around the world with pocket parks based on the design of Savannah in Georgia and a 101-acre Central Park, modelled on the original in New York. About 70 per cent complete, with 36,000 residents living in Songdo IBD, the city is beginning to look like the high-tech urban Utopia it was intended to be.
“When we started in Songdo back in 2010, much of the vision didn’t exist as a product. We had to build it from scratch – and we did – but it was pretty challenging,” says Bas Boorsma, director of internet of things, Cisco North Europe.
Cisco was heavily involved in the creation of intelligent buildings in Songdo, with more than 3,000 Cisco TelePresence units already installed in the city and, according to Cisco, a further 17,000 will be fixed in homes by Songdo’s completion. These personal video devices can connect residents to doctors, tutors, schools and other innovative services.