U-city development for economic competitiveness in an advanced ICT era

The world economy has undertaken economic restructuring. In a postindustrialization period, information-related industries, associated with urban creativeness, are driving economic growth in the world. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is critical to make cities competitive in the 21st century. ICT helps to generate high levels of productivity in business sectors and to attract highly educated human capital for new knowledge creation. Governments attempt to provide the advanced ICT infrastructure for achieving a leading role in a global economy since innovative technologies play an important role in the competitiveness of cities. Thus, the primary objective of this paper is to explore the new trend in urban development coupled with ICT infrastructure for enhancing urban competitiveness, using South Korea as case study. By virtue of advancement in ICT, Korea has initiated to create a Ubiquitous City (UCity). U-City aims to enable any people to access various U-services anywhere and anytime through U-technology. These facilities can strengthen urban competitiveness and improve quality of life attracting highly educated human resources. U-City development is a new approach to improve urban competitiveness in an advanced ICT era