Secretary General of the World Smart Sustainable Cities Organization (WeGO) Jeong-kee Kim delivered a visionary lecture entitled The City Designed for People: From Digital Transformation to Innovation. He discussed how digital transformation is reshaping cities and why the next stage in the development of the smart city concept must go beyond technology.
The world is experiencing a period of unprecedented technological change. Just a few years ago, many of today’s technologies were seen as prospects for the future. Today, however, they are increasingly becoming part of everyday life.
“Cities are
no longer preparing for digital transformation. It is already happening. But as technologies become more powerful and increasingly
integrated into our urban environments, I believe we need to ask ourselves a more
fundamental question: Why are we changing and transforming in the
first place?” the expert said.
Jeong-kee Kim noted that a city may have access to cutting-edge technologies, sophisticated data-sharing platforms, artificial intelligence and highly interconnected infrastructure, but technology itself is not the ultimate goal.
“Technology helps cities address the problems and challenges they face. But the success of digital transformation should not be measured solely by the number of technologies a city has deployed,” he stressed.
The expert also argued that innovation should be measured by the value it delivers to people. He noted that the future of digital transformation would depend not only on technological capabilities but also on how cities put them to use.
“At WeGO, we believe that cities are not simply places where digital transformation happens. They are where digital transformation takes on meaning. And we believe that cities can achieve more by working together,” Jeong-kee Kim concluded.
