As a co-investigator, Prof. Fangzhu Zhang successfully secured an UK–South Korea Connections Grant from UKRI for the project titled ‘Humanising the Smart City’ with the South Korean partner, Centre for Asian Urban Societies at Seoul National University (CAUS, SNU) (details here). The principal investigator was Dr. Jung Won Son from the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL. The project was from February 2022 to May 2023.
This project aimed to collectively contemplate how to overcome both the naïve optimism about the smart city and swiping dismissal and come up with a future direction for research and practice of smart city. Under this aim, there were three concrete objectives.1) To build a shared theoretical foundation for a larger project of the smart city research: The concept of smart city, though efforts were being made to provide it a universal definition, differs across nations. 2) To organize three academic workshops. 3) To offer cross-national teaching at the post graduate level: The expertise of two parties in smart cities and the intermediary outcomes of workshops could be used to facilitate teaching at the postgraduate level. 4) To build institutional networks: The PI and the Korean partner had been working together in various capacities. They had organized sessions in academic conferences and workshops and visited each other’s institutions as visiting scholars; the pair had a long history of collaboration.
The project went well and successfully finished with the proposed objectives being accomplished. For example, on 21 February 2023, a workshop was successfully held at UCL (details here). The organisers included the investigators at UCL and Seoul National University. There were 8 presenters from UCL, Connected Places Catapult, and University of Stavanger, including Prof. Fangzhu Zhang; and 3 discussants from UCL and Seoul National University. The presenters shared their insights on smart city research and practice, while the discussants led productive discussions.