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The paper of Myungjun Jang and Soon-Tak Suh traces recent developments in Ubiquitous Cities (U-Cities) in Korea. ‘˜U-City’ is a 21st century futurist city which enables urban functions and services such administration, traffic, crime prevention, fire prevention and home-networking of residential places, fusing high-tech infrastructure and ubiquitous information available into the urban area. Ubiquitous means ‘˜existing anywhere’ and is an environment where the user can access the network everywhere and without being aware of the computer/network.
They analyze U-City in terms of intelligence, network, platform, and services that offer intelligence to urban activities and optimize situations related to urban function. The services of U-City is divided into u-Home, u-Work, u-Traffic, u-Health, u-Environment, u-Public service and u-Education largely according to the application range of services. U-City is realized by a combination of (1) communication infrastructure wired and wireless (i.e. xDSL, FTTH, RFID, Wi-bro, mobile communication), (2) construction infrastructure such as high-tech intelligent buildings and intelligent roads, (3) solutions such as home networking, building management system, and (4) e-Learning, IP-media, etc.
U-City in Korea has the world best level of wired and wireless infrastructure and ubiquitous IT technology is developing rapidly. About 20 local administrations are promoting actively U-cities in cooperation with national communication service providers, the Korea Land Corporation and the Korea National Housing Corporation. The objective is to construct urban environments as intelligent services through IT and ubiquitous IT.
Projects are focusing on local economic activities by selecting specialized industries that fit to the features of the region. Cities construct safe and convenient living environment through u-City projects and promote specialized business in relation to the social and cultural features and the industrial development strategies of each region.