From South Korea to Malaysia, ‘smart cities’ turn to ghost towns
South Korean here. (I live in Seoul, Kangnam.)
This article contains so much mis-information about Songdo, that I would like to point out.<p>&gt; where lamp posts are always watching you<p>CCTVs are very, very common in South Korea. This isn&#x27;t something special to Songdo, and CCTVs are the number-one reason that South Korea has the 5th highest rate of people that think walking around in the dark is safe. Nobody thinks that CCTVs are surveillance; people believe the government in general.<p>&gt; small touch screen display on his kitchen wall that allows him to keep track of his and his wife’s consumption of electricity, water and gas and, most important, compare it against the average statistics for the building.<p>This is super-common in Seoul, it&#x27;s not something special in Songdo or such.<p>&gt; It claims to have the highest concentration of green Leed-certified buildings in the world, yet it is still entirely car-based, with not even a train line to the nearby airport.<p>One thing to keep in mind is that South Korea generally (especially Seoul) is a very public-transport friendly, with a pretty-high 40% percentage of all transport (user&#x27;s own car takes 39% of all transport).<p>The time when Songdo was planned, the high public-transport percentage was considered a &#x27;bad-thing&#x27;. People tried to model the &#x27;America Way&#x27;, and that&#x27;s why Songdo was constructed with an emphasis on car-based transport.
This plan was reverted years ago, and Songdo is currently constructing four subway routes.<p>&gt; From South Korea to Malaysia, ‘smart cities’ turn to ghost towns<p>Songdo is not a ghost town, that is just plain wrong. It was one of the most successful cities in South Korea. It&#x27;s population is rapidly increasing every year, with a competitive rate of 4855:1 to move in Songdo. Also, unlike the article&#x27;s explanation, a big fraction of Songdo population comes from provinces other than Seoul (which is something similar to rural areas in the US).<p>Overall, this article is overly emphasizing things that are nothing to Koreans but can be seen negatively to Americans; the explanation about Songdo are plain-wrong; and I just can&#x27;t see what this article is trying to say.