Promises of Urbanism: New Songdo City and the Power of Infrastructure

Abstract

All around the world, new cities are popping up. Magically, they all closely resemble each other. They claim a cosmopolitan vibe that one typically associates with the big metropoles such as New York City, Buenos Aires, or Paris. These cities have become prototypical for 21st-century urbanism. They claim to be smarter and ecologically superior, seemingly providing a city-level answer to urging global problems like climate change. This account draws on critical urbanism to critically investigate the promises of model cities. I point out how these high-tech utopias are engineered in ways that render them logically feasible, drawing on the lively example of New Songdo City, South Korea. The powerful, formulaic logic of logistics does not only shape Songdo’s physical transportation and communication networks but also its political structures and economic unfoldings. Infrastructure becomes a medium of what Easterling (2014) calls “extrastatecraft”; spatial infrastructure dictates and polices behaviors, thus becomes a medium of polity.

Logistical Worlds

The word “logistics” invokes pictures of container harbors, trucks, and tracks, which string together long-distance railroads. Logistics, according to common understanding, means controlling, adapting, and channeling the flows of goods, to facilitate either business or military operations (Bowersox et al., 2002, p. 14). This narrow understanding does not capture the full scope of logistics, however. Logistics are far more encompassing than container ports, railroad networks, and therein travelling goods: Many aspects of our daily motions are entrenched in logistics. Some say that we now inhabit “logistical worlds,” where streams of migrants’ flow in and out of regions; where supply chains are deeply entangled into all our doings and are reaching even the most remote corners of the planet (Rossiter, 2014). Digital flows of information reach across oceans, continents, and even into space. These flows and circuits encompass and constitute our globalized worlds (Rossiter, 2014).

For instance, we begin to grasp how powerful and pervasive logistics are when we look at urban planning. Nowadays, there is one phenomenon that seems especially peculiar: All around the world, new cities are popping up. Magically, they all closely resemble each other. They claim a cosmopolitan vibe that one typically associates with the big metropoles—such as New York City, Buenos Aires, and Paris. These model cities are constructed within years and often match historically grown counterparts to a T—except that they are supposedly smarter and ecologically superior (Songdo IBD, 2018).

According to Parag Khanna, an international relations scholar, “cities are the world’s experimental laboratories and thus a metaphor for an uncertain age” (Khanna, 2010). They are both the foundation, and the effect, of a networked world. Cities seemingly offer a template to solve many of our most pressing problems, “from climate change to poverty and inequality” (Khanna, 2010). Khanna explains that “getting cities right might mean the difference between a bright future filled with HafenCitys and Songdos—and a world that looks more like the darkest corners of Karachi and Mumbai” (Khanna, 2010). Khanna’s words mark a trend in modern urban planning, an attempt to solve urging (global) problems, like climate change, on a city level (Kuecker, 2013; Kuecker & Hartley, 2019). South Korea’s Songdo City is one of many examples. It was built within a matter of years. It prides itself on its sustainability, even proudly parading the title “world’s first smart city” (Bilotta, 2014; Yoo, 2017). How come that these model cities have become so prototypical for 21st-century urbanism? It is worthwhile to look at the pervasive powers of infrastructure to unmask the hype of template towns like Songdo. This account draws on theoretical perspectives from critical urbanism, emphasizing the power of logistical infrastructures. Critical urbanism connotes “an understanding of critique, based on a notion of power as a resource a ruling class possesses, and of knowledge as an ideological construct that needs to be unveiled” (Farías, 2011, p. 365) and “emphasizes the politically and ideologically meditated, socially contested and therefore malleable character of urban space” (Brenner, 2009, p. 198).

I will focus on New Songdo City, which is constructed just on the outskirts of growing Seoul. Unlike many of its counterparts around the world, it is nearing completion, which makes an interesting starting point in the investigation of how life, apart from the promises, actually plays out in a “city of the future.” I will draw on the theoretical lenses of critical urbanism, mainly on Keller Easterling’s (2014) perspectives on extrastatecraft. There are also a variety of primary online-sources available to study this case, in addition to critical inquires by Korean scholars, which helps to add a less U.S.-centric note to the analysis. I will point out, how and why New Songdo City is a prototypical example for the promises of 21st-century urbanism. Then, I will point out why infrastructure is so powerful, drawing on the lively example of New Songdo City’s waste management system. In the final section, I will explain how model cities often emerge from so-called Free Economic Zones, and how this shapes the role of governmental actors and private corporations in this “high-tech utopia.”

The “City in a Box”: Promises of Urbanism

The office buildings, business, and industrial parks, strip malls, smart streetlights, driveways, and ports of cities like Shenzhen, Abdullah Economic City, Dubai Meydan City, or Songdo are not each the unique representations of an urban developer’s vision. Model cities closely resemble each other—even though they are found in completely different parts of the world. New Songdo City is built completely from scratch, yet it originates from a template (Easterling, 2014). There are replicas of beloved cosmopolitan hallmarks, parading a history that is not Songdo’s. The city boasts “the wide boulevards of Paris, a 100-acre Central Park reminiscent of New York City, [. . .] a modern canal system inspired by Venice, and convention center architecture redolent of the famed Sydney Opera House” (Songdo IBD, 2012). Almost no aspects are left to chance. Songdo’s materialization follows a very literal interpretation of what is commonly considered “urban” or “cosmopolitan.” How so? In Easterling’s words, these model cities follow a “matrix of details and repeatable formulas that generate most of the space in the world” (Easterling, 2014, p. 11). These cities are made of reproducible products, bricks of a set that have been imagined (and implemented) before within similar urban building projects. In model cities, “prevalent urban forms like the campus or office park,” that are already successful in their template form, are breeding with each other (Easterling, 2014, p. 26). Thus, resembling popular spatial products, like research parks, financial districts, and medical centers can be found in model cities around the world. The building blocks are engineered in a way that renders them logistically feasible. They constitute what Easterling terms “infrastructure space” (Easterling, 2014). Everything fits into a set of compatible infrastructural technologies, that all follow detailed routines or schedules. The chief objective is the organization of distribution and consumption. Formerly, only strip malls were designed around big brands like Starbucks and McDonalds, today entire cities are constructed around a logistics’ logic, forming “infrastructure space” (Easterling, 2014). The formula is a generic representation of global urbanism. New Songdo City must not be understood as an accumulation of buildings, but as “urban space as the product of more formulaic drivers” (Easterling, 2014, p. 41). New Songdo City’s layout closely resembles the layout of other, equivalent incentivized urban forms—not just in a neatly designed, generic skyline, but also in its layout.

In 2002, the construction of New Songdo City started. It is conceptualized to home about 3,000,000 inhabitants by its completion (Poon, 2018). As of 2019 only 100,000 individuals have settled down in New Songdo City, considerably less than planned at this stage of development (Duxbury, 2019). Nevertheless, the developers are holding on to their vision. New Songdo City is promoted for its synergies between economic growth and environmental protection (Mullins & Shwayri, 2016). The hope is that cities, like Songdo, will solve the most pressing problems we face nowadays, such as climate change, food security, and rampant urbanization that leads to disorganization and social division (Khanna, 2010; Kuecker, 2013). Besides, South Korea is especially keen on making Songdo an exportable model that can be adapted elsewhere, making the country the frontrunner in today’s urban planning industry (Mullins & Shwayri, 2016; Shwayri, 2013). The developers of Songdo call it the “city in a box,” hinting at the concept’s exportability (Easterling, 2014, p. 50). Especially the ecological and smart city aspects of Songdo City raise high hopes for exportability, which is characteristic for grand technological projects (Smart City Hub, 2017). Infrastructural technologies raise the hope of “a ‘panacea’—a universal fix for all social woes” (Pfotenhauer & Jasanoff, 2017, p. 1). But can the issues that we are facing today—the rise of authoritarian regimes, climate change, food security, scarcity of energy resources—be really fixed by new, complex technological systems? On the hunt for a magic bullet, a panacea, it is easy to buy into the promises of these urban development projects. However, this evokes a technological fix, the idea that engineering can fix all problems that the solution lies in better, more innovative technologies. Amid these promises, it is easy to overlook that all the issues we are facing today are underwired by complex social, political, and cultural dimensions (Jasanoff, 2005; Verbeek, 2011). Therefore, it is of utmost importance that we do not blindly buy into these promises. We must critically inquire into large-scale technological projects, looking beyond the hype. Following this notion, I now illustrate that infrastructure is more than a set of exportable building blogs that can be instrumentalized toward preconceived goals.

New Songdo City: The Powers of Infrastructure

The term “infrastructure” is typically only associated with physical transportation networks or communication structures. To understand the power of model cities like New Songdo City, I will introduce a different account of infrastructure. According to Easterling, it is more than a hidden, binding medium. It includes “shared standards and ideas that control everything from technical objects to management styles” (Easterling, 2014, p. 11). Moreover, infrastructures have a huge impact on “the rules governing the space of everyday life” (Easterling, 2014). Easterling asserts that “infrastructure space has become a medium of information. The information resides in invisible, powerful activities that determine how objects and content are organized and circulated” (Easterling, 2014, p. 13). Infrastructure space is itself an information system. Spatial software is shaping the city. It makes some behavior possible, and some impossible. Thus, it contours and modulates behaviors of everyone and everything operating within (Easterling, 2014, pp. 3–5).

One lively example of spatial software is Songdo’s waste management. The system controls everything down to the single trash bin. It behaves like an agent; it even dictates what can be inserted by the residents. First, to access a trash can, residents have to use their smart identity cards to unlock the hatch (Kshetri et al., 2014). Once it opens, one can only insert normed bags, purchased from specialty stores. Contents have to be neatly organized into one of many categories (Neidhard, 2018). Otherwise, the sensors will prompt the rejection of the bag. A surveillance system that is linked to the waste management software monitors all activities. A resident’s trash can only be rejected so often before a formal warning is issued (Neidhard, 2018). However, if the resident acts in accordance to the rule set by the system, the trash gets sucked through underground pipes into the “Third Zone Automated Waste Collection Plant,” where 76% of waste is recycled and the rest is burned to produce energy (Arbes, 2014; James, 2016). The plant operates with only seven employees, a logistical dream come true (James, 2016; Neidhard, 2018).

The system itself is dictating logistics, it manifests certain activities. The “cumulative character of data streaming effectuates positive feedback loops whereby certain behaviors are amplified while others are hindered” (Krivý, 2018, p. 15).

Several scholars have investigated the link between smart cities and the transformation of urban governmentality (Gabrys, 2014; Klauser et al., 2014; Kuecker & Hartley, 2019; Krivý, 2018; Rodrigues et al., 2020). According to Foucault, governmentality are the strategies, logics, and techniques through which a society is rendered governable (Foucault, 1977). Governmentality has drastically shifted from surveillance and discipline primarily enacted through institutional actors to algorithmic forms of governance that fluidly capture and control (Deleuze, 1992; Kitchin et al., 2020). With the widespread implementation of distributed, ubiquitous, and increasingly automated technologies power is no longer confined to certain spaces and times but can be exercised through systems that, as in the case of Songdo, pervade and control every aspect of the sociospatial urban landscape (Klauser et al., 2014). The residents of Songdo are cautiously monitored and modulated through a distributed and interlinked system of control that polices even mundane daily tasks like taking out the garbage.

The rules are not written in the language of the law but spatial infrastructure technologies, which marks a shift from social contracts between states and citizens to a regime of public–private partnerships (Kitchin et al., 2020; Sadowski & Pasquale, 2015). In the name of sustainability, polity is enacted through waste management software systems, as a quasi-administrative authority. Easterling explains that “infrastructure space becomes a medium of what might be called extrastatecraft” (Easterling, 2014, p. 15). It resumes undisclosed activities, “in addition to, and sometimes even in partnership with, statecraft” (Easterling, 2014, p. 15). Not governmental agents, but the infrastructure itself is dictating logistics, setting standards, and policing unwanted behaviors. Infrastructure becomes an (undeclared) medium of polity. In many instances, the intended use and the real effects of spatial software are diverging. This is what Easterling terms the underlying disposition. With disposition, she refers to “not the object form, but the active form” (Easterling, 2014, p. 21). The waste disposal system is set out to make waste logistics more efficient, bringing New Songdo City closer to its sustainability goals—the intended or object form. The example of New Songdo City’s waste management system shows that spatial software is more than a mere instrument. In its active form, it grants a seemingly irrational degree of surveillance. When taking an instrumental approach, only looking at intended use or object form, these details, the active form, escapes. Infrastructure is deeply political, although it might not seem like it. In the following paragraphs, I will detail the political decisions and hopes that led to these urban forms and that correspondingly gave rise to Songdo, the “smart city.”

Extrastatecraft and the Zone

New Songdo City and two other cities in the Incheon area are part of the Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ) (Songdo IBD, 2018). Free Economic Zones can be found all around the world, they are often merged with a city and different economic incentives. The idea of the free trade zone is not new; it dates to the Romans, who established zones in which they did not have to pay tax to the emperor. In the 15th and 16th century, the Hanseatic League established trading colonies throughout Europe (Easterling, 2014).

The concept has since transformed. Formerly, the free zone was more static, “labor-intensive,” an “exploitive enclave” (Easterling, 2014, p. 39). IFEZ is an example of a newer version of the zone, it is dynamic, “investment-intensive, management-driven” and promoted as an “integrated economic development tool” (Easterling, 2014, p. 39). Especially the management aspect had a huge impact on the development early on. For instance, New Songdo City’s location within the IFEZ is the result of a deliberate selection process. At first, it might seem odd that New Songdo City was built on 600 hectares of reclaimed wetland along the Incheon waterfront that is historically a rural mixing bowl of many Asian cultures (Southerton, 2015, p. 3). Within the last 15 years, the area has undergone a tremendous transformation. Whole cities were stomped out of the ground. Everything within the IFEZ and New Songdo City is now engineered to constitute a consumption and distribution node within the global marketplace. Its location is key: New Songdo City sits at the Yellow Sea, connecting to trade routes of some of the world’s biggest economies, China and Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong.

It is no coincident that New Songdo City lies just an hour outside of Seoul, South Koreas capital, where many of the Korean multinational corporations keep their headquarters. A brand-new concrete bridge connects the city to the airport that is a mere 15-minute car ride outside of Songdo, conveniently facilitating international business air travel (Songdo IBD, 2020).

The airport is a central aspect, around which the new urban form was planned, thus Songdo can be consider an “aerotropolis” (Kasarda & Lindsay, 2011). Airports are the epicenter, “with cities growing around them, connecting workers, suppliers, executives, and goods to the global marketplace” (Kasarda & Lindsay, 2011). Thus, Incheon International Airport serves as a crucial function in the making and development of IFEZ and New Songdo City respectively. The government is hoping to lure foreign investors into the zone. In fact, the so-called free zone is an immensely popular spatial software for making urban space in this respect. The free zone was envisioned, long before the other infrastructural details of Songdo, its Sydney Opera House and its business district were conceptualized. In the late 1980s, then-president Roh Tae-Woo wanted to intensify trade cooperation between China and South Korea’s West Coast (Shwayri, 2013). The “Free Economic Zone” was seen as a potential pathway to attract foreign investors, thus heavily promoted by the central government. The goal was “a new growth engine to upgrade the Korean economy,” with special emphasis on business, logistics, and information technology (Baek, 2006).

The location and the conceptualization of New Songdo City reflect these national economic goals. Economic objectives had a big impact on the spatial form of New Songdo City. The authorities of IFEZ recognized that to pull in international corporations, the zone ought to become an “optimal living environment” for foreigners (Baek, 2006). Like many zones, IFEZ adapted an urban environment, virtually morphing into a city: New Songdo City (Easterling, 2014, p. 42). The developer began to plan a Songdo that “reflects a new global culture—one not dominated by a single nation or region, but a diverse group of people with similar tastes and needs” (Southerton, 2015, p. 91). Their plans prospectively cater to an affluent audience that “demands state of the art technology, eco-friendly green buildings, a universal business language (English), world-class recreation, and high calibre medical and educational facilities” (Southerton, 2015). High-class apartment buildings were constructed, equipped with golf courses. New Songdo City was designed for what the master planners envisioned to be the preferences of prospective foreign investors, drawing on the template of other model cities. This approach has shaped the atmosphere of the city, but not to everyone’s liking. One author austerely concludes that “sterile and soul-less, the city looks different from Korean cities” (Mesmer, 2017).

Indeed, New Songdo City and IFEZ do not resemble the rest of the country, not only aesthetically. Free zones typically provide “premium utilities and a set of incentives—tax exemptions, foreign ownership of property, streamlined customs, cheap labor” (Easterling, 2014, p. 15). Correspondingly, IFEZ provides lax trade regulations, different from other areas in the country. It includes incentives such as tax breaks and financial support to international corporations (Rugkhapan & Murray, 2019). For instance, foreign investors are exempt from paying income taxes (Kim & Ahn, 2011, p. 663).

Governing New Songdo City

The relationship between governmental authorities is peculiar within free zones like IFEZ. Like other free economic zones, IFEZ operates “under authorities independent from the domestic laws of its host country” (Easterling, 2014, p. 15). The central government set the goal of implementing a Free Economic Zone in the Incheon area, with New Songdo City as the central hub. Like its counterparts around the world, New Songdo City is largely operated outside of the national and domestic authorities (Kim & Ahn, 2011; Shwayri, 2013). The zone is largely controlled, planned and overseen by the Incheon Free Economic Zone Authority, IFEZA for short. The IFEZA is formally a department of the local government but its authorities are way more extensive than of any other department. The committee of IFEZA is in charge of regulating the zone “both spatially and socially through drawing up and implementing development plans, approving master plans, and designing tax benefits for [. . .] businesses” (Shwayri, 2013, p. 46). The zone is operated partly outside of, partly in partnership with, statecraft (Shwayri, 2013).

The development of New Songdo City is done in partnership with private corporations. Easterling defines private ownership as another key characteristic of the zone. The project cost range at around 35 billion U.S.-dollars, which makes it one of the most expensive urban development projects ever undertaken (Gale International, 2015; Songdo IBD, 2019). This hefty sum is financed through investors, such as U.S.-based real estate developer Gale International and multinational steel-manufacturer Posco. Additional funding is provided by the City of Incheon (Songdo IBD, 2019). Foreign actors play crucial roles, many of the typical state responsibilities, like schools and hospitals, lie in the hands of private corporations. Capitalist logic is running Songdo. Kuecker asserts that Songdo and its counterparts are a “reproduction of the modern system, especially in the mechanism of reproducing global capitalism” (Kuecker, 2013, p. 2). Lefebvre’s work describes the link between reproduction and agglomeration of capital and the large-scale transformation of territory as a process of “implosion-explosion.” Accordingly, the large-scale intensification and territorial expansion of capitalist growth sends some precapitalistic cities into rural exodus, while other are aggressively expanded upon to be woven into the urban fabric as strategic logistical nodes in a continuously accelerating global capitalist system (Lefebvre, 1996).

The making of Songdo was at all time in the hands of various global players. For example, a group from Harvard University advised the conceptualization of Songdo’s international school. “Philadelphia International Hospital and NY Presbyterian participated in designing a hospital complex” (Lefebvre, 1996, p. 5). George Mason University in Virginia and University of Utah, among others, run satellite campuses, providing a university infrastructure (Kuecker & Hartley, 2019). Some major global players engage in the development of New Songdo City and/or have settled with offices. Samsung, Daewoo, and LG, among other South Korean companies, have also opened offices and research centers (Borowiec, 2016, p. 1). All these corporations, institutions, and consultants are “hovering advising, funding, researching, investing, and potentially controlling the urban space” (Easterling, 2014, p. 18).

New Songdo City plays a part in reproducing capitalism in other manners as well. Firstly, the conceptualization of IFEZ marks a change in Korea’s governance, namely a shift to neoliberalism. The Incheon Free Trade Zone was only the first step toward opening the Korean economy to international trade through free economic zones (Free Economic Zone Planning Office, n.d.). New Songdo City, as urban form, exhilarates this transition. Second, a private finance investment bubble and large-scale development projects marked the first decade of the 21st century. Songdo is one of the offshoots (Free Economic Zone Planning Office, n.d.). The hub concept, the aerotropolis that Songdo embodies is both a product and a facilitator of neoliberal globalization (Kasarda & Lindsay, 2011). Neoliberal capitalism is guided by a super-mobile management elite, jetting around the world. Kuecker (2013) calls this class “corporate management and leadership diaspora” (Kuecker, 2013, p. 12). Furthermore, the “city from a box” is itself a neoliberal product. For instance, instead of speaking about Songdo’s “residents,” the term “end-users” or simply “users” frequently comes up (Kshetri et al., 2014). These instances illustrate that model cities, as urban forms, are closely intertwined with a capitalist logic.

This comes at a steep price. Another encounter with the powers of spatial software and extrastatecraft illustrates this complication. Cisco Systems, a U.S.-American multinational technology corporation, plays a crucial role in the making of New Songdo City. Cisco Systems is the project’s major technology planner and oversees the development of New Songdo City’s ubiquitous infrastructure (Cisco, 2016; Strickland, 2011). Cisco is building an integrated environment, the “Internet of Everything.” The city is built from the ground up, thus it was possible to embed smart technologies into energy, transportation, water, waste, and lighting systems, etc. (Songdo IBD, 2018). The (extra-)statecraft makers are proudly calling New Songdo City the world’s first “ubiquitous city” (Gale International, 2015). “Citizens have access to all types of services, everywhere and any time through ICT [information communication technology] devices” (Kshetri et al., 2014, p. 114). Energy supply is managed through smart meters that were adapted into every building, all lighting and transport infrastructures. The usage of water is regulated, and large amounts of gray water are recycled. All this is facilitated by sensors that monitor the environment, the movement of subject and objects, the distribution and consumption of water, heat, and electricity, etc. (Kim, 2014; Kim & Ahn, 2011).

But Cisco is not only building the “ubiquitous city.” The corporation uses New Songdo City as a real-life testing lab for developing new products and systems (Cisco, 2016). The city is meant to check goals for a smarter, more sustainable future while catering to cooperate interests as “the experimental prototype community of tomorrow” (Kasarda & Lindsay, 2011, p. 4). Songdo is a manifestation of a form of urbanism inspired by the technocratic vision of a handful of private corporations and an exemplary case of “test bed urbanism,” designed as both an experiment and a product that can be replicated, purchased and readily deployed (Halpern et al., 2013).

New Songdo City provides an ideal legal environment for testing and experimentation. “Much of this [smart city] technology was developed in U.S. research labs, but there are fewer social and regulatory obstacles to implementing them” in IFEZ (Regine, 2005). This comes with its pitfalls: While the IFEZA is in charge of making Songdo a reality, the public–corporate partnership is imperfect. “Once the private sector completes and successfully sells the project, it moves on to a new adventure while leaving the at times ill-prepared local government to run the new and high-maintenance project” (Shwayri, 2013, p. 44). The unbureaucratic, lax jurisdiction at IFEZ backfires. Cisco proceeds with its activities, unchecked by the political process. The situation is tricky: On one hand, Cisco is a service provider, on the other hand, it is an essential partner and investor, brought in by the IFEZ to spur the national economy. Like urban space, telecommunication technologies are a medium for information (Easterling, 2014, p. 17). At this bottleneck of telecommunication, Cisco holds a monopoly. Like ports and airports, the telecommunication infrastructure has “the power to either amplify or diminish the access to information” (Easterling, 2014, p. 18). Cisco sets consequential standards, shaping the ubiquitous technoscape. This technoscape is more than a by-product of market demands. Spatial variables should not be underestimated: these variables and their interplay are “powerful enough to leverage the politics of extrastatecraft” (Easterling, 2014, p. 21).

Infrastructure shapes and modulates the citizens’ behaviors, as I have previously pointed out. Moreover, the private corporate ownership scheme raises unforeseen tension within model cities like Songdo. The IFEZA was hoping that private investors would both spur the economy while reducing the share of public costs. Songdo, as a test bed of neoliberal capitalist development is not necessarily a place where the public good is the highest priority. Private corporations are dedicated to the profit-principle, not to issues of social justice. While New Songdo City is integrated into the network of global capitalism, it lacks check-and-balances.

Songdo: City without People?

The relationship between Korean citizens and New Songdo City, with its private and corporate makers, is far from rosy. New Songdo City was conceptualized by master planners. Shwayri concludes that “the planning of Songdo, like the planned modern cities of the 20th century, has ignored local realities while focusing on creating an exportable model” (Shwayri, 2013, p. 40). Many critics claim that the national government’s top-down plan, and the IFEZA’s actions, favor business interests while neglecting societal needs (Benedikt, 2016; Shin, 2017; White, 2018). The IFEZA has often faced strong opposition, especially from environmentalist groups. Many local and international groups are opposed to the expansion of urban space into the wetlands of Incheon that were once home to many endangered species (James, 2016; Save International, 2020). This is especially tragic (and ironic), considering that New Songdo City prides itself to be a sustainable, or eco-city. New Songdo City seems to be among the model cities that struggle to live up to their branding, turning their dedication to sustainability into more than a marketing gig.

Despite the problems that many model cities face, uniform urban infrastructures keep emerging everywhere. Amid these developments, the promises that are associated with these urban forms call for a critical inquiry. Can the most pressing problems be solved through spatial infrastructure? Infrastructures are a multifaceted and lived experience, Easterling’s conceptual lenses add to existing scholarship on critical urbanism by drawing attention to the nexus of corporate–private partnerships and the shaping of infrastructure as a medium of polity. Easterling’s account helps us to understand infrastructure not as mere landscape, but as a binding medium that shapes our actions. As I have illustrated, object form, intended use, and active form, or actual effect, can greatly diverge. From a logistical perspective, a “smart,” automated waste management system might be highly effective, but at what—perhaps unforeseen—price? A benefit in distribution is traded off against security and privacy aspects, spatial software becomes a policing instance. The extrastatecraft arrangement comes with its pitfalls as well: the “ubiquitous city” is frequently mocked for its many failed projects—or even declared as a failure altogether (White, 2018). But how can a quasi-jurisdiction-free zone like IFEZ shake those problems, with the city in private hands? The power of infrastructure is underestimated, its real-life social, cultural, and political impacts are often overlooked.

It is perhaps no coincidence that New Songdo City is drawing in far fewer inhabitants than the master planers guessed. Songdo parades long boulevards of empty cafes and shopping centers, resembling what some call a “ghost town” (Kshetri et al., 2014; Mesmer, 2017). While New Songdo City is perfectly laid out to facilitate the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, it is vastly unattractive to Korean’s and foreigners the like. Infrastructure is powerful, its impacts are often unforeseen. The future will tell if New Songdo City, and its makers, can reconfigure their relationship with the publics. Perhaps then, someday, the city shakes its “no man’s city” byname (James, 2016).