Critical Insight China City Planning Review Vol. 23, No. 2, 2014
Spatial Strategy for the Information Society: Rethinking Smart City Miaoxi ZHAO, Shifu WANG, Luying LI Abstract This study examines the topic of the information society from a spatial perspective. It reviews the basic impacts of information technology on urban space in terms of travel behavior, functional organization, and spatial image, and then puts forward the corresponding spatial planning strategy for the information society. Influenced by information technology, the concentration/ de-concentration of urban functional organization and the changes in travel demand have increased the complexity of the urban spatial structure, while the city image delivered by digital media promotes the blending of real space and virtual space. According to relevant researches, information society is considered an objective existence, whereas smart city can be perceived as a planning paradigm embodied with a promising vision. Therefore, spatial planning in the information society should be conducted from the two perspectives of both instrumental rationality and value rationality. On the basis of that, this study proposes that the construction of a smart city should foremost improve the spatial efficiency with the help of information technology, and pay attention to the spatial probability during the process of urban development, so as to bestow the spaces of all levels the adaptability to respond to different scenarios; on the other hand, the spatial strategy of a smart city should return to people-oriented values and shape localized spaces, so as to cope with the challenges of global mobility and ultimately achieve sustainable regional development.
Keywords information society; urban space; smart city; resilience
1. Introduction Along with the progress of urbanization in the world, the wave of informatization started from the late 1970s has greatly influenced the life and production of human society in terms of both depth and breadth, and, following the industrial revolution, information society has become another civilization cycle in human history. Therefore, Bell used “information society” to replace his well-known concept of the “post-industrial society”; Webster, in his book Theories of the Information Society, summarized the characteristics of information society with technology, economy, profession, space, culture, etc. as standards, and concluded that the characteristics of information changed our way of living.① In a sense, city is also a way of living for people, so it can be deduced that information characteristics can change urban space. However, for many city policy-makers and planning professionals, the logic that information changes space is too metaphysical, while concrete functional mechanisms and proper countermeasures are more important.
graphic Information System (GIS) belongs to the assistant decisionmaking system, the generally so-called planning professionals do not have a say in the smart city field. In view of the objects of the planning discipline, the planning professionals have to face two core issues in order to do something regarding urban spatial planning in the information society: What impacts
Digital library
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Wi-Fi
Virtualization Cloud security
3G
Library
Database
Operating mode Wireless Local Area Network (LAN)
Urban planning Remote sensing
Geographic Information System (GIS)
Cloud computing
Industrialization Logistics Urbanization Scientific View of Development
Information society Smart city E-government affairs
Internet E-commerce
Internet security
Information literacy
Wireless city
Digital city
Digital earth
Information technology
In practice, at the time when information technology solutions to city problems gushed out, smart city as a new development concept emerged. In China academic discussions about smart cities saw a new round of upsurge, and the explorations on smart cities also became more intense in the planning field. Nonetheless, when reviewing the keywords of literature on smart cities that were collected by CNKI, it can be found that most of the studies came from the electronic information field and the related subjects (see Fig. 1). Considering the facts that during the planning and design communications engineering belongs to the field of civil infrastructure and the Geo-
Mobile communication
Information service
Informatization
Service-oriented government
Internet of Things
Urban development
Radio Frequency Identification
Sustainable development Sensor Eco-city
Recycling economy
Fig. 1 Keywords in the literature on smart city
Wireless sensor network
E-tag
E-governance Information security
Public service
Critical Insight Spatial Strategy for the Information Society: Rethinking Smart City
does the in-depth application of information technology have on urban space? How should planning correspond to it through spatial strategies? These two issues are the main shackles for planning professional to participate in the practice of smart cities. Undoubtedly, after 30 years of development, the urban planning practice of China has entered a stage of comprehensive planning that covers social, economic, environmental, and other aspects. However, the functional organization, transportation, and spatial image of a city are still the core contents emphasized by planning professionals in making planning results. Thus, this paper analyzes the spatial action mechanism of information technology from the three core perspectives of function, transportation, and image. On such a basis, it explores the spatial response to the information society by considering the concept of a smart city.
2. The action mechanism of information technology on urban space 2.1 Urban functional organization In as early as the 1980s, some scholars noticed the impact of information technology on the concentration/ de-concentration of urban space. Toffler held that the development of information technology weakened the role of spatial distance,② and Caimcross put forward the view that “distance is dead.”③ As the development of electronic communication networks greatly reduced the limitation of distance, the economic activities began to concentrate in the non-central urban
areas which have their own advantages, and the concentric development pattern of the city was broken and replaced by a multi-centered and networked development pattern.④ – ⑤ Meanwhile, information technology greatly improved the ability of enterprises in integrating the production factors, and the externality of upstream and downstream industries was ultimately expressed by a greater demand in using land for high-tech industrial clusters. These facilitated the formation of high-tech industrial zones near locations that contained venture capital, research institutions, infrastructure, convenient transport, and a high quality of life.⑥ – ⑩ What corresponds to the theory of information technology-led spatial de-concentration is the theory of spatial restructuring.⑪ According to Audirac’s study, these two theories are quite different in such aspects as basic concept, spatial feature, research tradition, social equity, political economy, planning challenge, information-age landscape, etc. (see Table 1). The school of restructuring held that the role of the information technology in urban spatial organization was not merely related to de-concentration: the technological and communication revolution in high-speed progress not only enhanced the spatial diffusion, but also had the demand for spatial concentration, which led to the agglomeration of economic, social, and other factors in certain regional spaces.⑫ In theory, the impacts of information technology on the urban spatial structure can be deduced to Alonso’s urban spatial model: that information technology improves the entire urban transportation enabled
Table 1 Urban form in the information age: deconcentration and restructuring schools Deconcentration school City and region conceptualized Scale Urban/digital space Research traditions
Restructuring school
Postindustrial City; E-topia; Smart City; Aerotropolis
Post-Fordist City; Informational City; Global City; Network City
Metropolitan and intrametropolitan
Metropolitan, regional, global
Hybrid space (combination of physical and virtual space); Internet-backbone space
Multimodal and digital connectivity; space of flows versus space of places; Synergistic relations between urban place and electronic spaces
Spatial interaction models (aggregate data, urban scale)
Case studies
Probability choice models (individual behavior)
Comparative studies of cities using aggregate data Dual city: social polarization
Social equity issues
Digital divide; spatial mismatch; spatial segregation
Casualization of labor, flex-timers; Socioeconomic stratification; Uneven development; Physical and electronic ghettos
“Perverse” public subsidies
Regime of regulation; entrepreneurial city; growth machines
Planning challenges
Congested cities: fragmentation of activity in hybrid space and information technology (IT) synergies with automobile society result in travel demand that overwhelms transportation infrastructure
Interjurisdictional bidding wars for global capital; Congested cities: IT synergies with automobile society, and just-in-time production result in travel demand that overwhelms transportation infrastructure; Dominance of space of flows over space of places
Information-age landscapes
Sprawling polycentric: (1) High in mobility, low in accessibility, spatially mismatched; (2) connected/disconnected from Internet backbone (network of a few metropolitan cities)
(1) Polycentric and intensely extra-networked by land, air, water, and digital means to global and regional urban systems; (2) deeply digitally and multimodally intra-networked, albeit all the more socioeconomically segregated, physically overextended, and stuck in traffic
Political economy
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the bidders to arrive at the CBD from a farther distance with shorter time, which not only caused the outward expansion of the urban spatial boundary, but also technically supported the high-intensity development of the city center (see Fig. 2). While in the transitional process of urban functions, the huge changes in people’s lives and production modes, caused by information technology, resulted in remarkable changes in urban functions. Urban land use, especially the land use in central areas, saw a tendency of mixed use, which led to the outward expansion of the urban spatial landscape and thus facilitated the functional restructuring in the suburban areas. ⑬ – ⑮
substitution, complementation, and modification or neutrality.㉓ The substitution effects meant that the development of information technology reduced the demand for travel, which had been proven by a great number of studies. While the complementation effects of information technology on transportation considered that, although telecommunication had greatly expanded the frequency and intensity of non-local connections, it did not make local connections meaningless; instead, it greatly promoted the diversity of local relationships between people.㉔
2.3 Cognition of the city image 2.2 Urban transportation Entering the 21st century, the relationship between information technology and transportation gradually became a hot topic. Among the researches on commuting transportation, Gaspar and Glaeser insisted that the complement role of information technology to faceto-face interactions is stronger than its substitute role,⑯ but generally the development of information technology would weaken the concentration of a city.⑰ – ⑱ In empirical studies, most scholars held that the development of information technology made it possible to work at home, and the spatial switch of information node enhanced the possibility of a multi-site work style, while the results of spatial deconcentration reduces the demand for travel.⑲ – ㉑
Intensity increasing of the central area
In addition, some scholars have noticed the influence of information technology on different types of traffic flows. Graham and Marvin proposed four kinds of effects that information technology had on a city, i.e., physical and developmental synergies, substitution effects, generation effects, and enhancement effects.㉒ While, according to the research of Metin, the influence of information technology on transportation could be further summarized in three modes, namely
Comprehensive impacts of IT
CBD
Ordinary residential area
Peripheral industrial area Outward expansion of urban space
Fig. 2 Impact of IT on the urban space structure
Distance to CBD
In the field of spatial cognition, the theory of the “Image of the City,” created by Kevin Lynch in the 1950s has become the supporting theory in the field of human settlements,㉕ with the experience in urban physical space as the objective basis for image cognition. Along with the deepening of informatization and globalization, the public awareness of urban spatial elements is no longer totally dependent on the allround contact with the real physical environment. Instead, to a certain extent, it relies on the spreading of media material, and the Internet, based on information coding technology becomes an important media to publicize the spatial image of a city.⑰ However, the medium itself is not just a neutral intermediary; it can, to a considerable extent, influence the construction of society, culture, and ideology,㉖ and the urban spatial orders established by various kinds of media present that spatial images are selectively delivered by special groups. Moreover, information dissemination also changes the space-time restriction regarding efficient information exchange in the traditional society. The traditional social order and physical spatial relations have been subversively impacted, and the virtualization of the physical world has brought about new challenges and opportunities to urban public space. The spatial aesthetics on city and buildings have already broken the limits of traditional physical space, and there coexist an interactive connection between physical and virtual spaces as well as that between real existence and virtual construction. Mitchell even asserted that human beings in the 21st century lived not only in a “real” city built with reinforced concrete, but also in a “soft” city built with digital communication networks.㉑, ㉗㉘ In March 2012, the transport department of Shanghai announced abolishing the No. 55 bus service that had decades of history. In just a few days the announcement was greatly opposed by the netizens in the microblog. The various speeches forwarded in the Internet brought back memories of many people, and even attracted the attention of people of thousands of miles away. The insignificant No. 55 bus service had become a collective memory about the city’s specific location in the cyber world. This case vividly showed that in a society with rapid
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transmission of media information, the overlapping and interaction between the virtual world and actual world brought about the reconstruction of city image of specific social groups.
3. Smart cities in the information society The wide application of information technology has become an irreversible fact in the urbanization process. Since the publication of A Smarter Planet: The Next Leadership Agenda by IBM, related practices have reflected a close kinship between the smart city and information technology. Reviewing the concept of the smart city, it can be found that focusing on the sustainable urban development, urbanrural integrated development, core demand of people’s livelihood, and other concerns, the advanced information technology such as “Internet + the Internet of Things” and urban management concepts are organically combined, so as to make the operation of a city more secure, more efficient, more convenient and greener, which constitute the basic concept of smart city construction.㉙ Regarding the relationship between information society and a smart city, the former is already an objective existence, while the latter is a kind of planning paradigm with promising visions. In urban construction practices, the techniques such as GIS and communications engineering are included in the application of information technology in the planning field, but they only provide complementary and supporting service. For planning and design staff, urban space is always a major issue. In this context, the aspects of urban functional optimization, travel guidance, and spatial image promotion are still the core issues of smart city construction. Since urban planning inevitably involves the division of spatial interests through policy, the practice of smart city as a planning paradigm should not only solve urban problems from the perspective of instrumental rationality by use of information approaches, but should also face the various issues caused by informatization from the perspective of value rationality. The specific urban spatial strategies should be subject to basic planning values.
4. Urban spatial strategy in the information society 4.1 Optimization of urban functional organization At the macro level, relying on the boosting effect of information technology on industrial upgrade, the hierarchical structure and functional structure of the urban system should be optimized. By making use of the supporting role of communication and transportation techniques on population and industrial decentralization in
metropolises, and by using the experience of European mega-cities for reference, multiple centers that are separated from each other in form and coordinated with each other in function should be fostered, so as to alleviate the various problems of the centripetal big cities on the regional level. In January 2013, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development announced the first list of national smart cities. Among them, the selected Sino-Singapore Knowledge City of Guangzhou presented the strategy to promote multi-centric development of the Guangzhou-Foshan metropolitan region relying on knowledge-intensive industries. At the micro level, taking advantage of the network information in eliminating the distance barrier, the quality of urban life should be improved by actively adopting an integrated technological system. In current practice of urban construction, concepts such as “smart medical treatment” and “smart education” are introduced not only by relying on the advantage of integrating the technical system, but also by benefitting from the realization of a remote service that uses information technology to eliminate the separation of spatial distance. As an old urban area with scarce land and lacking service facilities, Hongkou District of Shanghai tried in 2012 to use the information service platform of its blocks to provide convenient services to the elderly. This kind of solution that reduces travel time without shortening the spatial distance is also a smart planning to reasonably use information technology. In the city center, the historical context of traditional neighborhoods meets the inherent demand of some people’s symbolic consumption in the information society, while the spatial concentration of highlevel management functions in global cities is a result of a simple communication habit of delivering tacit knowledge through face-toface exchange. Therefore, in the process of a functional transformation toward a modern service industry in the city center, attention should be paid to emphasize the continuation of historical context. Big cities, especially Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, etc. that have the function of a world city, should explore mixed-use land mode in the city center so as to meet the needs of spatial concentration in the information society. In addition, in the process of globalized “time-space contraction,”㉚ the flexibility of enterprises’ location means a variety of options for the desirable planning location. This, together with the trend to short-cycle floating capital, greatly increases the uncertainty of urban land development. As a result, in the compilation of plans, the mid- and longterm development planning should focus on establishing a safety pattern of regional ecology. It should also demarcate the boundaries
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of spatial growth to control urban sprawl caused by information and transportation technologies; while the short-term operational planning (such as regulatory planning) should improve the contents of flexible control. Moreover, for some operational planning, the compilation period can be properly shortened,㉛ and a rolling plancompilation can be adopted, so as to absorb the floating capital to promote urban development.
4.2 Urban travel guidance The travel guidance of a smart city should first use the substitution effect of information technology to improve transportation efficiency and to reduce the ratio of useless travel by, for instance, providing diversified service for travelers. The real-time information of road traffic and parking lots in CBD can be released to the travelers nearby, and massive data can be processed in an integrated way to form useful travel guidance, so as to promote the efficiency of the city and to reduce the redundant transportation of passengers. Meanwhile, the overall transport efficiency can be improved through the construction of the Internet of Things. In Fig. 3, a1 and a2 indicate the transport optimization of service modes in the commercial city center. In the traditional mode, each individual consumer separately goes to the CBD for shopping , forming 12 travel units (see a1 of Fig. 3), while the smart logistics system that collects users’ demand information through Internet (such as online shopping) only needs 6 travel units to meet the demands through circular delivery between peripheral consumers (see a2 of Fig. 3. The satisfaction of consumers’ demands and increasing effectiveness, due to the reduction of transport expense caused by information technology, can be explained by microeconomics, which is omitted here due to space limitations). Secondly, for heavy traffic burdened urban areas, the planning and design should promote the adaptability of the road system in response to different spatial conditions, i.e., a “smart” local transportation can be organized for different situations: in times of traffic congestion, travelers are guided in a timely manner to change their travel route according to a proposed plan (see b1 and b2 of Fig. 3); or another “soft” management measure – using the information system to collect situational congestion fees according to the number of vehicles entering the city center – can be taken to guide travelers to change their travel mode towards better times so as to realize traffic flow control (see c1 and c2 of Fig. 3). Thirdly, urban transport planning should focus on the temporal and spatial distribution features of different types of travel. As the diversified contact of the Internet increased the travel demand, and accompanied by an increase in leisure time and travel area of the public, the
a1. Total social travel distance is 12 units
a2. Total social travel distance is 6 units
Consumers go to central area for shopping separately b1. Travel arranged by smart logistics
Travel arranged by smart logistics b2. Travel guided by smart transport
Travel route in normal situations
Travel route in emergency
c1. Traffic load
c1. Smart transportation with real-time control on traffic load
Transport organization with lower traffic load
Area to collect congestion fees in time of higher traffic load
Fig. 3 Transportation optimization of smart cities
traffic pressure in the recreational or tourism areas of some cities will further increase. The planning should predict this situation and take technical measures to increase the supply of transport facilities. Of course, smart transport should also emphasize the follow-up actions at the management level. For example, in the National Day holiday in October 2012, a great number of tourists were stranded in the scenic area of Mount Hua. Such an incident would have been completely avoidable if the policy of paid vacation leave could be implemented and real-time monitoring on tourist flows within the scenic area could be conducted.
4.3 Optimization of urban spatial image Since the city image, especially that of a mega-city, no longer only depends on the personal experience of pedestrians, the spatial image delivered by various kinds of media is superimposed on the traditional cognitive map, and the non-physical factors also becomes an important tool to market the city image. For instance, in the film Impression · Sanjie LIU directed by Yimou ZHANG, the traditional film was organically combined with the natural landscape of Guilin in a skillful way, which promoted the city image in the audiences of all ages in a wide scope. This shows that planning and design should not only concern the design of physical form, but also pay attention to
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the expression of the intangible city image. In the case of the Shanghai No. 55 bus services mentioned above, the transportation and planning departments made a quick response in just one week, changing the “name” of Bus 910 that has a similar route into Bus 55. Such disposal of non-physical form satisfied the need of some groups for conducting symbolic collective-consumption on city image. Of course, in the face of the instantaneity and mobility features of the complex society, optimizing the design of space from the physical level is still an important foundation for the establishment of the city image, and the individual need for interaction and the sense of honor for a place are still the fundamental forces to maintain the sustainable local development. So the planning and design should give more consideration to the non-physical factors like humanity, history, and social psychology, and integrate them into physical planning.
5. Planning values of the information society From the perspective of value rationality, urban planning inevitably involves the allocation and adjustment of spatial interests. As a planning paradigm, the construction of a smart city is not equal to a direct application of information technology at the spatial level. The spatial growth achieved by leaving out basic values and over-relying on technologies is not a smart city. In practice, depending on the convenience provided by information technology for working or living in a remote place, some so-called luxury villas, high-tech parks, and even isolated enclaves, are built in the outer suburbs. This kind of over-dispersed development is unfavorable for the overall spatial efficiency of the city, and the spatial results achieved by integrating high-tech facilities are not “smart” cities either. Likewise, the gentrification phenomena in city center regenerations led to the ecological succession of the senior white-collar to the indigenous citizens, forming a de facto social isolation. Such a place cannot be regarded as a “smart” neighborhood either. Further, when reviewing the case of the No. 55 bus service from a dialectical perspective, it is worth re-thinking the phenomenon of generalization of symbol consumption of the city image in the information society. Bus 55 should aim to solve the travel problem of the citizens along the bus line; however, the majority of people participated in the microblog no longer take this bus. So should Bus 55 be retained to carry the collective memory of the minority? Although different people may hold different opinions to this issue, it is unreal-
istic to use a physical system to carry too many symbolic consumption needs in the Internet age with its information explosion. In general, facing the urban space issues brought by the information society, policy-makers and planners should treat them calmly. It is true that the planning practices that please the capital and break away from the needs of local people can get rewards for the moment, but the fair and harmonious social relationship is essential to maintain the long-lasting charm of a place. During the construction of a smart city, the local government should avoid becoming dependent on the growth machine; instead, it should take initiative to regulate the various market behaviors amid city operations.
6. Discussions The introduction of the concept of smart city brings information technology once again to the forefront to solve social problems. However, the application of advanced technologies cannot simply go back to technological determinist thinking, for which Mumford had put forward similar warnings in his Technics and Civilization . Therefore, the construction of smart cities is by no means a purely technical integration. It should strictly examine the value orientation problem involved in the practice, and consider it from the two perspectives of instrumental rationality and value rationality. Meanwhile, the promotion of spatial efficiency should be subject to the protection of spatial justice, which also is significant in the smart city as a planning paradigm. In addition, in the complex process of social transformation, the rise of a network society promoted people’s subject consciousness,㉜ but the tolerance of the individuals often became extremely fragile due to the information spread on the Internet, for which the functions that could previously be usual in the planning and design may become difficult for spatial juxtaposition. For example, some livelihood facilities with negative externality (like food markets, rail transport, and transformer substations) were difficult to be built due to the fierce opposition of some people caused by the spread of Internet information. In this regard, the next research topic worthy of exploring is how to examine and improve the whole process of urban planning, so as to adapt it to the organizational form of the information society and to carry out effective public participation. Translated by Caige LI Proofread by Yan TANG From City Planning Review , 2014, 38 (1), pp. 91 – 96.
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⑤ LIN, Chenfang. The Researches of Office Activity Location in Information Era . Shanghai: Tongji University, 2009.
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Authors Miaoxi ZHAO, PhD, Lecturer, State Key Laboratory of Subtropical Building Science, School of Architecture, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, P. R. China. Shifu WANG, PhD, Professor, Doctoral Supervisor; Dean, State Key Laboratory of Subtropical Building Science, School of Architecture, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, P. R. China. Luying LI, Postgraduate, Urban Planner, Guangzhou Urban Planning & Design Studio, Guangzhou, P. R. China.
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