Digital City, Smart City and Beyond

Toru Ishida
Department of Social Informatics, Kyoto University
[email protected]

ABSTRACT and introduce typical examples.

This article revisited past digital cities, and discussed smart cities
and the future. If we understand digital cities as exploration of cyber
2.1 Social Interaction
space and smart cities as exploitation of physical space, the next The European Digital Cities Conference has been held annually
stage is to evolve networked society based on cyber physical from 1994. The topics include telematics applications and car-free
systems. The current movements suggest two different directions, cities. A good example is Digital City Amsterdam [2]. This city was
socialization of commerce and commercialization of society. We built as a platform for various community networks and thus
can predict the convergence of the two directions in the future. focuses on social interaction among citizens.
Digital City Amsterdam was launched by a non-profit organization
CCS Concepts called DDS (De Digitale Stad) for communication between the
Human-centered computing ➝ Collaborative and social municipal council and citizens. All communication was presented
computing ➝ Collaborative and social computing theory, via text. Terminals were placed at public spaces such as libraries.
concepts and paradigms. The success of this experiment increased the interest of the citizens
in the Internet. In the first ten weeks, 10,000 people registered with
Keywords the digital city and 100,000 accesses were recorded. The system
Digital city; smart city; cyber-physical system. continued to grow, and in 1998, 80,000 users were registered with
the digital city.
1. UNDERSTANDING TRENDS
From the 1990’s to the 2000’s, digital cities have been developed 2.2 Virtual Space
and become operational in Europe and Asia. At first glance, it Helsinki Arena 2000 Project started in 1996, under the initiative of
seems natural to regard today’s smart cities as the successor of the Helsinki telephone company (now Elisa) [3]. The goal of the
digital cities. It is also natural to think that their differences are due project was building the next generation metropolitan network. This
to the technologies they use, i.e., digital cities are characterized by network enabled citizens to communicate with each other using live
activities based on web services, while smart cities demonstrate video in both directions: members of a classic car community can
sensory services. This interpretation is not wrong but not so cooperate on repairs by using live video transfer.
persuasive, because some of digital cities have been developed to
connect virtual and real cities. In parallel to the development of high speed networks, an entire 3D
city of Helsinki was built. As the 3D model became more accurate,
Let us submit two keywords “digital city” and “smart city” to more computational power and communication bandwidth were
Google Trends on trial. We learn that smart cities evolved ten years required to view the digital city at home. The virtual city was a face
after the termination of digital city activities. In the meantime, of the project, and provided a human interface for new broadband
global optimization of resource usage was attracting increasing services. Though there was a big discussion on whether or not 3D
attention around the world. Though there certainly are technological virtual reality was useful, the 3D Helsinki was accepted by the
advances from digital to smart cities, it is more meaningful to see Finnish people who always prefer new technologies.
the “digital city” as the exploration of cyber space, while the “smart
city” is the exploitation of physical space. This approach makes it 2.3 Connecting Virtual and Real Spaces
easier to discuss what lies beyond the digital and smart cities. In Kyoto was the capital of Japan for more than a thousand years, and
future cities, cyber and physical spaces will be more tightly has been a cultural center of Japan for even longer. We started a
connected and our attention will shift from exploration or digital city project for Kyoto in 1998 [4] with two design policies.
exploitation to the evolution of systems and architectures of society. The first was to make it real by establishing a strong connection to
the physical Kyoto: The digital city complemented the
2. DIGITAL CITY corresponding physical city, and provided an information center for
Various approaches have been used to develop digital cities in everyday life for actual urban communities. We thought “digital”
Europe and Asia [1]. In the US, corresponding activities were called and “physical” make things “real.” The second policy was to make
community networks. Those activities were collected and published the digital city live by dynamically integrating web archives and
in three books entitled “Digital Cities” in 2000, 2002 and 2003. real-time sensory information created in the city.
Below, we classify their activities into three categories, social
interaction, virtual space, and connecting virtual and real spaces, We proposed the three layer model as a system architecture suitable
for digital cities. The first layer, called the information layer,
© 2017 International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2), integrates web archives and realtime sensory data and reorganizes
published under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 License.
them using the city metaphor. The second layer, called the interface
WWW 2017 Companion, April 3-7, 2017, Perth, Australia.
ACM 978-1-4503-4914-7/17/04. layer, uses 2D maps and 3D virtual spaces to provide an intuitive
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3041021.3054710 view of digital cities. We developed FreeWalk and the scenario
description language Q for 3D virtual spaces with social agents [5].
The animation of moving objects such as avatars, cars, busses, and
trains demonstrated some of the dynamic activities in the cities. The

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third layer was called the interaction layer where residents and (.com) and non-profit (.org) organizations and employees move
tourists interact with each other. If an animation reflected a real from one to the other flexibly. In France, it is now illegal to waste
activity, the moving object became a tool for social interaction: food. Supermarkets must sign contracts with non-profit
users could click the object to communicate with it. organizations to collect and distribute the food. Unfortunately, since
the efficiency of for-profit and non-profit organizations are far
In the Kyoto railway station, we installed a disaster evacuation different, the connection is not seamless at this moment. However,
system that tracks passengers to help them navigate [6]. As the we can discover potential problems from their courageous
sensors, we placed twenty eight cameras in Kyoto station, and challenge.
captured the movements of passengers in real time. A 3D virtual
city system was used to reproduce the passengers' behavior. A 3.3 Commercialization of Society
bird’s-eye view of the real space was reproduced on the screen of Another evolution is the commercialization of citizens’ ordinary
the control center so that evacuation leaders in the center could life. Networking of unused resources in society can reveal profitable
easily monitor the station. The leader can point at particular resources. A typical example is called the sharing economy such as
passengers on the screen, and talk to them through their mobile Uber and Airbnb. Most cars in large cities are idled in parking lots.
phones. We also implemented a large-scale outdoor evacuation It is reasonable to share them to reduce environmental burden.
system. A simulation with three thousand agents controlled by Related non-profit activities called sharing cities have been
evacuation scenarios was performed in parallel with an experiment launched in Seoul, Amsterdam, and so on. Although most of their
in the real space. The leader could issue high level instructions to activities are non-profit, sharing cities are creating substantial values
the evacuees, and precise navigation instructions were automatically by recycling resources. Similarly, newly created social innovation
generated by the agent for each evacuee. companies are viewing their market as a long tail investment.
3. SMART CITY AND BEYOND We can expect the convergence of the two evolutions in the future,
3.1 Smart City i.e., for-profit and non-profit activities will be connected seamlessly
A large amount of literature has been published on smart cities. The to sustain our society [9].
definitions of smart cities and comparison to related concepts are
found in [7, 8]. Though the conceptual relatives of the smart city
4. REFERENCES
include digital city, intelligent city, virtual city, ubiquitous city and [1] Toru Ishida. Understanding Digital Cities. Digital Cities:
information city, since the substantial volume of activities were Experiences, Technologies and Future Perspectives, Springer-
under the name of digital city, we focus on comparing the concepts Verlag, pp.7-17, 2000.
of digital city and smart city in this article. According to [8], digital [2] Peter Van den Besselaar and Dennis Beckers. The life and
cities provide innovative services based on broadband death of the great Amsterdam Digital City. Digital Cities III.
communication and service-oriented computing, while smart cities Information Technologies for Social Capital: Cross-cultural
apply technologies of self-monitoring and self-response systems to Perspectives. Springer-Verlag, pp. 66-96, 2003.
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and poor infrastructure, energy shortages and price instability, Helsinki Arena 2000 - Augmenting a real city to a virtual one.
global environment, and human health. Digital Cities: Experiences, Technologies and Future
The above definitions include two separate aspects. One is the Perspectives, Springer-Verlag, pp. 83-96, 2000.
technological aspect, which highlights the difference between [4] Toru Ishida. Digital City Kyoto: Social Information
digital cities with the rise of the Internet, and smart cities being Infrastructure for Everyday Life. Communications of the ACM
challenged in the era of IoT. The other is the social aspect, which (CACM), Vol. 45, No. 7, pp. 76-81. 2002.
distinguishes roles in human society: digital cities explore cyber
[5] Toru Ishida. Q: A Scenario Description Language for
space while smart cities exploit physical space. Both digital and
Interactive Agents. IEEE Computer, Vol.35, No.10, pp.54-59,
smart cities represent paradigms, which are the general approaches
2002.
adopted by a community for carrying out research and development.
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to discuss the next stage of smart cities, but the latter social aspect Nakanishi. Augmented Experiment: Participatory Design with
can trigger the broad discussion of future cities. The rest of the Multiagent Simulation. International Joint Conference on
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3.2 Socialization of Commerce Ubiquitous Cities: Defining a Common Architecture for Urban
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is Industrie 4.0 in Germany. The initiative aims at networking a Environments, pp. 301-306, 2010.
large number of manufacturing companies to create a nation-wide
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There are several related activities. Michael Porter proposed the
concept of CSV (creating shared value) which could reshape [9] Jeremy Rifkin. The zero marginal cost society: The internet of
capitalism and its relationship to society. A for-profit sector Y things, the collaborative commons, and the eclipse of
Combinator will conduct a trial in support of universal basic income capitalism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
in Silicon Valley. The design firm IDEO now has both for-profit

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