Songdo is the smartest city in the world?

Nikolas Badminton was invited to be a Futurist in attendance for the United Nation’s UNFCCC Resilience Frontiers. Here we see Nikolas discuss his thoughts around whether Songdo is the smartest city in the world?
Songdo is built on 1,500 acres of land reclaimed from the Yellow Sea off Incheon, about 56 kilometres (35 mi) from the South’s capital Seoul. The Songdo district is the largest private real estate development in history. By its completion date in 2015, the district was planned to contain 80,000 apartments, 50,000,000 square feet of office space and 10,000,000 square feet of retail space. Overall an amazing achievement.
It certainly felt advanced with new infrastructure – roads, hotels, shopping centres, high rise offices, super markets, restaurants, and conference centre.
It also felt deliberate and designed to meet a plan for a ‘smart city’ vs. a place to build connection.
Here are some of my thoughts:

We need to come back to social connection and human-centred design. I like to refer back to the thoughts and book ‘Happy City’ by Charles Montgomery to come back to what is important. The creation of ’emotional infrastructure’ and social connection to build truly happy cities.

“Unfortunately, when choosing how to live or move, most of us are not as free as we think. Our options are strikingly limited, and they are defined by the planners, engineers, politicians, architects, marketers, and land speculators who imprint their own values on the urban landscape.” Charles Montgomery

See more of Nikolas’ posts on smart cities.

Nikolas Badminton speaks to BETAKIT on Smart Cities

A Day in the Life of a Smart City Planner (Infographic)

Bruce Sterling: Smart City States