Asian tigers bid to become ‘street smart’ super cities

The capitals of the four original Asian Tiger economies should be turning more towards citizen involvement in smart city development, Waltraut Ritter, founder of Knowledge Dialogues, tells I by IMD.

Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul and Taipei have long been four of Asia’s leading cities. How do they shape up as smart cities? 

Generally, Asian cities are much more tech aware than other parts of the world. They have higher tech literacy rates and greater acceptance of tech. People also tend to be less afraid of data sharing and have fewer concerns about data privacy. 

 These four cities, which have long been among the region’s richest, all started their smart city planning about the same time, around 2010. But since then, their trajectories have been quite different. Singapore and Hong Kong both have big, top-down master plans set by their governments – Singapore with its Smart Nation master plan, Hong Kong with its Smart City Blueprint. Taipei and Seoul, in contrast, from…