Smart World Cities in the 21st Century

Agnes Mainka

• Publisher: De Gruyter Saur
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783110709605
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110575323
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Science General
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The term smart city has become a buzzword. City planners develop ubiquitous connectivity through Wi-Fi hotspots, establish science parks, introduce bike and car sharing, and push entrepreneurship. All this is happening under the flagship of becoming a knowledge city. This book investigates the digital and cognitive infrastructure of 31 cities and how they meet the demands of the knowledge society in an increasingly digitized environment.

1Informational world cities

World cities are centers of human interaction. Urbanized areas and cities are home to more than half of the world’s population, and by 2030 almost 5 billion people will live in cities or towns (UNFPA, 2007). The fact that only 135 metropolises contribute 37% of the world’s total GDP clearly demonstrates that cities are important hubs of the global economy (Clark, Moonen, & Couturier, 2015). The increasing amount of people living in a dense area confronts city governments, citizens, and local business with new problems but also opportunities. What does this mean for the development of world cities and why is it so important that they are informational?

The origins of city research can be traced to Weber’s (1921) sociological analysis The City, in which he discussed the anonymity of cities in contrast to rural areas, and the city’s role as a market center in a capitalized economy. World cities in particular have been the focus of further urban research like in Hall’s (1966) The World Cities. World cities are agglomerated areas which are not defined by their political boundaries, such as the conurbation area Randstad Holland. These cities are centers of governmental, economic, and human activity overall. According to Jacobs (1969, 1984), economic growth as well as the development of the modern world depends on the interaction between cities. As a simplification, city interaction is defined in terms of economic networks of firms. Thus, city researchers have emphasized the importance of world cities in a global network (Friedmann, 1986; Hall, 1966; Sassen, 2001; Taylor, 2004). How these networks are interlinked has increasingly been changed by the advent of information and communication technology (ICT), which has ushered in an entirely new era of economic trade, transaction, and communication. Following Castells (1989), this is the rise of the “networked society” in which spaces of flows (information, capital, and power) determine the spaces of places. He introduces “informational cities” as prototypical cities of this development.

The term “informational city” has not yet been firmly established as a common term to describe the development of future or modern cities (Stock, 2011). In the literature terms like “digital city” (Ishida, Ishiguro, & Nakanishi, 2002), “network city” (Craven & Wellman, 1973), “ubiquitous city” (Shin, 2009), or “smart city” (Hollands, 2008) refer to cities with an emerging and growing digital infrastructure based on ICT as well as the quality of life and green infrastructure (Mainka et al., 2013; Stock, 2011). “Smart city”, however remains a somewhat fuzzy term (Albino, Berardi, & Dangelico, 2015; Nam & Pardo, 2011), sometimes used synonymously to informational city and sometimes as a reference to the digital networks and enhanced sustainability dominant in such cities. Furthermore, informational cities cannot be observed as an isolated phenomenon based on a highly developed digital infrastructure. Yigitcanlar (2010) and Stock (2011) define informational cities as prototypical cities of the knowledge society. The essential factor here are human beings who are able to use information adequately and transform it into knowledge and vice versa (Kuhlen, 1995; Linde & Stock, 2011; Stehr, 1994; Yigitcanlar, 2010). Thus, we can establish a connection to the importance of the cognitive infrastructure (Stock, 2011) that is observed in “knowledge city” (Ergazakis, Ergazakis, Metaxiotis, & Charalabidis, 2009) and “creative city” (Florida, 2002; Landry, 2008) research. Additionally, cities are complex constructions which today are equally based on digital and physical infrastructures. So far, physical infrastructures and networks have always been the focus of world or global city research (Friedmann, 1986; Hall, 1966; Sassen, 2001; Taylor, 2004). Therefore, I have adopted the term “informational world city” (Mainka et al., 2013) which combines the different types of cities and its infrastructures as illustrated in the following figure (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1: Infrastructures of an informational world city. Source: Mainka et al. (2013, p. 296).

The term “informational city” was recently defined by the researchers Manuel Castells, Tan Yigitcanlar and Wolfgang G. Stock. Yigitcanlar (2010) uses the terms “informational city” and “knowledge city” synonymously, defining knowledge as the crucial factor of the human and economic development. Most prominent is the definition by Manuel Castells (1989), who has defined cities according to their space of flows (information, capital, and power). Accordingly, cities are the space of places that are determined by the space of flows. For Castells the emergence of the digital infrastructure has incited a dramatical change of the economy and society in general. Global connectivity has been revolutionized through this new exchange of flows. Since information and knowledge have always been important, it is now possible to transform and enhance knowledge production, sharing, and consumption through these networks. This is a global trend evolving in different cultures and places and resulting in a new understanding of distance. Distances do not only shrink in relation to geographic locations, but also in the form of communication between different stakeholder such as civil society, business, and government. Online is a new space for communication, participation, and creativity (Lor & Britz, 2007). Mostly choosing social media or Web 2.0 platforms as their digital venues, different parties meet to share content and to communicate (de Vries, Gensler, & Leeflang, 2012; Mainka, Hartmann, Stock, & Peters, 2014). The result is a tremendous amount of digital information and data. Finally, through digitization and online communication we have arrived in the age of big data and ubiquitous computing (Bryant, Katz, & Lazowska, 2008).

Beyond this exclusively technical aspect, knowledge has also become an important factor of economy in relation to land, labor, and capital (Machlup, 1962). According to Yigitcanlar (2010), an informational or knowledge city is characterized by its knowledge infrastructure, including universities as well as research and development institutes. Further basic characteristics are a well-educated population, digital infrastructure, a globally acting economy, spending on research and development, and the creation of high value-added products. Of course, ICT networks and global connections play an equally important role as knowledge cluster agglomerations within the city which lead to personal contact and share of tacit knowledge.

The agglomeration of talented persons is also acknowledged as key driver of innovation and economic growth (Florida, 2003). The quality of life and place according to public services (e.g. health and education) are important for attracting the “creative class.” A wide range of cultural activities and amenities, as well as cultural heritage, is attractive to these talents. To build a successful knowledge city, Yigitcanlar (2010, p. 395) argues that policies and visions are crucial:

The common strategies include political and societal will; strategic vision and development plans; financial support and strong investments; agencies to promote knowledge-based urban development; an international, multicultural character of the city; metropolitan Web portals; value creation for citizens; creation of urban innovative engines; assurance of knowledge society rights; low-cost access to advanced communication networks; research excellence; and robust public library networks.

Stock (2011) defines informational cities similar to Yigitcanlar (2010) and Castells (1989). For him, informational cities are complex constructions. Different factors have to be considered when analyzing this development. In his work Informational Cities: Analysis and Construction of Cities in the Knowledge Society, he defines an indicator catalogue which consists of six main aspects that influence the “informativeness” of a city: infrastructures, labor market, corporate structure, soft locational factors, political willingness, and world city (cityness). All aspects are highly correlated (Figure 1.2). For example, the political willingness to become an informational city positively influences the infrastructure. This may positively impact the labor market and so on. He calls this the positive feedback loop.

Figure 1.2: The development of an informational city from the perspective of network economies. Source: Stock (2011, p. 980).

Stock (2011, p. 966) argues that

[w]hen Castells published The Informational City in 1989, he could not have known how existing informational cities would look like (since the Internet had not yet happened), but the theoretical foundation for dealing scientifically with informational cities had been laid. Today, we have informational cities in front of our eyes: Singapore, Seoul, and Dubai set themselves the explicit goal of creating such cities (and are very far along the way); London, New York, San Francisco (and environs), Shanghai, and Hong Kong predominantly bank on hightech industry and services and are modifying their regions into informational cities. Today – at the beginning of the 21st century – we can fill Castells’ theory with life.

According to the indicators identified by Stock (Figure 1.2), global comparisons of cities are lacking. There exist some rankings and indices on isolated aspects, like the political willingness of a city, as he mentioned Singapore, Seoul, and Dubai. But whether political willingness, in general, has a positive effect on the transition towards an informational city is not demonstrated in his paper. Furthermore, he refers to findings relating to the knowledge society that are based on isolated regional data, like the comparison of the labor markets of the San Francisco Bay Area and the Los Angeles region, and on state-level data, like the Human Development Index and ICT Development Index. Detailed data on the state and development of concrete cities on their path into the knowledge society all over the world as case studies, however, are nowhere to be found. Drawing on Castell’s, Yigitcanlar’s and Stock’s theory, this thesis is a first attempt to investigate the influence of political willingness, infrastructures, and the status as a world city on the state and development of prototypical cities of the knowledge society on a global scale.

The work at hand will provide an introduction to the development of the city in the knowledge society, in particular the economic development and innovations that have led to the emergence of the knowledge society (chapter 2). Many current publications deal with the future development of our cities and in this work, I will connect them and investigate the main indicators of the w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgement
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• 1 Informational world cities
• 2 The rise of the knowledge society
• 3 Measuring cities of the knowledge society
• 4 Methods
• 5 Identifying prototypical cities of the knowledge society
• 6 Case study investigation of 31 informational world cities
• 7 Conclusion
• Appendix I: List of all interview partners
• Appendix II: Literature Review
• Appendix III: Bike sharing
• Appendix IV: Best ranked university in city
• Appendix V: Patents granted 2000–2012
• Appendix VI: Coworking spaces