Humanising the Smart City: London Workshop

Contact Jung Won Sonn and Lin Hsu to sign up to attend.

Building upon in-depth discussion regarding South Korean and Taiwanese smart city policies in the September 2022 Seoul workshop of Humanising the Smart City, the London workshop covers UK, Norwegian, and mainland Chinese smart city cases.

Proponents of the smart city concept claim that a smart city can help solve urban problems such as environmental unsustainability, traffic congestion, crime, alienation of underprivileged groups in political decision-making, and pandemic. However, sceptics are concerned about the big data firms' appropriation of the data generated by citizens, the seduced consumption caused by big data- informed advertisements, and the violations of privacy by enhanced surveillance systems, among others. It is our view that a humanised vision for the smart city requires a more contextualised understanding of the current smart city practices. We have planned long-term interdisciplinary research, the first step of which is the current workshop series.

With financial support from ESRC’s UK–South Korea Connections Grant, we organise three workshops. After the London workshop, the third, to be conducted online, will take place in summer 2023, with a focus on the philosophical and theoretical issues of smart cities.

Organisers

UCL

• Dr Jung Won Sonn
• Dr Fangzhu Zhang
• Dr Jessica Ferm
• Ms Lin-Fang Hsu

Seoul National University

• Professor Bae- Gyoon Park
• Dr Hanbyul Shim

Presenters

• Ms Katie Adnams, Connected Places Catapult
• Ms Yaxi Deng, UCL
• Dr Jessica Ferm, UCL
• Dr Daniel Fitzpatrick, UCL
• Dr Heeseo Rain Kown, UCL
• Dr Anders Riel Muller, University of Stavanger
• Dr Phoebe Stirling, UCL
• Dr Fangzhu Zhang, UCL

Discussants

• Professor Michael Batty, UCL
• Professor Ayona Datta, UCL
• Professor Bae-Gyoon Park, Seoul National University

Download the programme