Connecting Digital and Physical Cities

As a platform for community networks, public information spaces that mirror the city metaphor are being developed around the world. The aim of digital cities is to pursue a future information space for everyday urban life, unlike the creation of new businesses which is the current obsession of the Internet. We started the basic research project called “Universal Design of Digital City,” a five year project established in 2000, a part of the Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST) run by the Japan Science and Technology Corporation (JST). The objective of this project is to construct digital cities as the infrastructure that encourages the participation of all people, including the disabled and the aged. We will develop basic technologies for the universal design, focusing on ‘sending information,’ ‘receiving information,’ and ‘participation.’ This paper introduces some of various experiments such as crisis management, environmental learning, and shopping street navigation. Digital cities are not imaginary since they correspond to the physical urban spaces in which we live. Basic technologies including perceptual information infrastructure and social agents are being developed for connecting digital and physical cities. 1. Why Digital Cities The notion of digital cities can be defined as follows: digital cities will collect and organize the digital information of the corresponding cities, and provide a public information space for people living in and visiting them [4]. Digital cities have been developed all over the world, and can be connected to each other via the Internet, just as physical cities are connected by surface and air transport systems. Why do regional information spaces attract people given that we are in the era of globalization? We realize that the Internet has fostered global businesses, but at the same time, it enables us to create rich information spaces for everyday life. While the Internet makes businesses global, life is inherently local. Business requires homogeneous settings to allow global and fair competition, while daily life can remain heterogeneous reflecting our different cultural backgrounds. If differences exist in business, standard protocols are needed to over come them, but we do not need any standard for social interaction. If the differences are significant, we will turn to the Internet for cross-cultural communication support. Connecting Digital and Physical Cities 247 With the development of the Internet, economies of scale have driven business activities to become global. Even small companies can participate in the worldwide business network, since the Internet significantly reduces search and negotiation costs to find partners and markets. The Internet makes commercial transactions much easier in most business areas. On the other hand, globalization is not so frequent in everyday life. Although the Internet has widened the information channels available, it cannot physically move people. Statistics show that people still spend their income for housing, shopping dining and so on where they live. Everyday life substantially remains local even though the Internet offers international reach. Table 1. Two Extremes in Internet Use Business Everyday Life Global Local Market (Competitive) Community (Collaborative) Homogeneous Heterogeneous Standard Protocol Cross-Cultural Communication Table 1 shows two extremes of Internet use. The table does not mean that the two types of usages are always disjoint, various combinations are common in Internet use. The motivation for studying digital cities is to shift our view of Internet use from one side (business) to another (everyday life). Both perspectives should be combined to build a public information space in which people can participate and interact, and to create consensus for the various problems.