Abstract
This chapter examines the linkage between two governing strategies: the discourse of sustainable development and sociotechnical infrastructure of smart cities. Drawing on a case study of Songdo, South Korea, this chapter problematizes the interplay between the historical evolution of sustainable development as a new growth paradigm and the new urban governance model of smart cities afforded by the new regime of digital media. In doing so, this chapter explains how a smart city emerged from complex relationships among diverse actors and things including the nation-state, IT corporations, transnational non-governmental organizations, digital technologies, the urban environment, and the citizens. This transition is largely driven by the rationale that posits sustainability as an aim of “good governance.” This good urban governance model in turn foregrounds the civic virtue demanded of the globally minded, ecologically conscious, and responsible “good citizen.” Subsequently, this chapter challenges the role of the digital in the local experience of smart and green city, in the sense that the digital technologies were used to impose standardized universal solutions to the local problems.
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Notes
- 1.
In the US, more than 60,000 commercial projects were participating in LEED, and this system was said to have spawned an entire “green building” industry worth up to approximately $248 million in the US by 2016 (US Green Building Council official website).
- 2.
According to Vatsal Bhatt (2016), the director of Cities and Neighborhood Development at USGBC, the new LEED for Cities programme asks cities to provide data across five categories to generate a performance score: energy, water, waste, transportation, and human experience. The human experience category includes various sociological data such as the percentage of the population with a high school diploma or bachelor’s degree, median gross rent and household income, crime rate, unemployment rate, and so on.
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Yang, C. (2020). Smart City and the Reinvented Politics of Governing Through Datafied Environment in Songdo, South Korea. In: Díaz-Pont, J., Maeseele, P., Egan Sjölander, A., Mishra, M., Foxwell-Norton, K. (eds) The Local and the Digital in Environmental Communication. Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research - A Palgrave and IAMCR Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37330-6_10
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