International Case Studies of Smart Cities: Pangyo, Republic of Korea
This case study is one of ten international studies developed by the Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements (KRIHS), in association with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), for the cities of Anyang, Medellin, Namyangju, Orlando, Pangyo, Rio de Janeiro, Santander, Singapore, Songdo, and Tel Aviv. At the IDB, the Competitiveness and Innovation Division (CTI), the Fiscal and Municipal Management Division (FMM), and the Emerging and Sustainable Cities Initiative (ESCI) coordinated the study. This project was part of technical cooperation ME-T1254, financed by the Knowledge Partnership Korean Fund for Technology and Innovation of the Republic of Korea. At KRIHS, the National Infrastructure Research Division coordinated the project and the Global Development Partnership Center provided the funding. Pangyo is a new city built from 2003 onwards near Seoul with a vision to become the Silicon Valley of Korea. Approximately 75 million USD of the development gain was allocated to smart city implementation, which took place in one shot within 3-4 years along with the city construction. Pangyo classifies its services into smart portal, facility management, security, disaster, and environment. Interesting aspects of Pangyo are the use of smart kiosk media boards for information provision and real-time management of street lights and waterworks. Key advantage of Pangyo is the low concern for investment overlap from simultaneous development of new city and smart city system, which also enabled high degree of integration of various functions in a spacious smart city operation center as well as utilization of fiber-optic network. Pangyo is currently making various attempts to generate revenue to cover maintenance cost through attracting advertisement on media boards and kiosks, and providing education contents to citizens at low charge.