Digital city rises from a swamp

DECEMBER 05, 2006

DEVELOPERS in South Korea are building the world's first digital city
at a cost of $US25 billion ($32 billion) and its first 2000 residents
are expected to be living there in 2009.

Songdo City, designed to house 65,000 residents in fully wired houses,
is the crown jewel of an ambitious government plan to turn a 600ha
muddy reclaimed plot of land on the Yellow Sea into a gateway to
northeast Asia.

It will have the most advanced digital infrastructure, from blanket
wireless internet coverage and automated recycling to universal
smartcards for paying bills, accessing medical records and opening
doors.

Songdo will merge medical, business, residential and government data
systems into a so-called ubiquitous city on a scale never seen before.

All houses and offices will have built-in computers to collect data
from swipe cards and sensors for the U-life management centre run by
Songdo U-Life, a joint venture between Songdo's US developer, Gale
International, and LG Electronics subsidiary LG CNS, the creator of
Songdo's digital backbone.

It is the ultimate testing ground for tracking products and people
with radio-frequency identification chips, a technology facing
resistance in other countries over privacy issues. 

[...]

Full article at "The Australian IT"
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/
0,7204,20870274%5E15322%5E%5Enbv%5E1530 6,00.html


Cheers, Steve..

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