The Asia-Pacific region homes the majority of the world's biggest and fastest gro-wing urban areas. Simultaneously it is a region confronted with unique challenges concerning making use of tight resources and energy. So it does not come as a sur-prise that the topic "Smart City" plays a central role in the city development in this region today and in the future. Making cities brisk with life, more intelligent, re-sourceful and more efficient, but most of all more livable is the aim here.
The term "Smart City" stems from the urban design concepts of the 90s. They were researching planning strategies in connection with smart growth. Today the term is mostly used in connection with IT-technologies. At the end of the 20th century Asian countries already began supporting urban districts financially but also spatially. So-lutions for urban problems such as scarcity of resources and population growth we-re to be found. "Smart" Cities, in our perception, are well functioning organisms, which will also be vital and livable for future generations. They are resilient and adaptive for great challenges ranging from climate change to population growth, but also for "petite" local defiances stretching from the energy revolution to self-sufficiency in urban gardens. This concerns the urban infrastructures as well as the future city user. A city is also considered being smart when the dwellers have learned to be creative and innovative by giving their infrastructures and urban spaces new meaning.
Cities such as Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei and Shanghai are often been praised in concerns of them being intelligent or smart ci-ties. They are lauded for their efficient, green, socially inclusive and technically pro-gressive developmental concept. At the conference "Smart Cities Asia 2015" taking place in Kuala Lumpur the integration of networks with intelligent technologies, in-telligent mobility, an improved public service, energy efficiency, sustainability and intelligent information and communication techniques were for the first time an-nounced to be main goals. Research predicts that the annual investments in smart city technologies in the Asia-Pacific region will quadruplicate until 2023 and they will reach about 11.3 billion dollar in worth.
Seoul also is on the list of global pioneers when it comes to smart cities in the Asia-Pacific region. In the city where Samsung's head quarter is situated, digital gover-nance and an open data policy are of major importance. Also the participation oppor-tunities for the citizenry take effect. As the city did not offer any suitable space for a facility of a bigger and planned smart city, the experiment of the resourcefully ori-ented city Songdo City, about 40 kilometers in the South-Western direction from Se-oul, was founded. Songdo in many concerns already fulfills the expectations of a planned smart city. All of the citizens are bound to a permanent collection of data, ranging from the multi-functional chip card (for public transport, health insurance, bank and apartment access) to video surveillance of public areas and to the creation of motion images. This digital interconnectedness is supposed to save up to 30% of the resources and energy in comparison to conventional cities. Concurrently all in-ternationally recognized standards have been adhered to when building the city. The resourceful individual but also public transport has priority as well as the 40% of the surface that is covered by parks and green spaces.
