Smart City Needs Smart People: Songdo and Smart + Connected Learning

Abstract

Newly industrialized countries in the Far East are characterized by the rapid growth of new cities, and Songdo in South Korea is one. Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group for whom the two authors previously worked, were integrally involved in helping to develop a strategic plan for the city to become a sustainable model of a “smart and connected community” and to become a hub for the Asia-Pacific headquarters and the international business of multinational firms creating clusters interconnecting industry, academics, and R & D. Cisco is engaged in the implementation of the city’s pervasive network infrastructure, which will support the city’s aspirations to rethink the way cities are designed, built, managed, and renewed to achieve economic, social, and environmental sustainability using the network as the fourth utility.