Ubiquitous City: Future Cities approach

Over time, cities have sought to increase the welfare and quality of human life and, recently, to preserve the environment through the agricultural, industrial, and technological revolutions. In the 21st century, information and communication technology has become necessary for urban development and planning to improve the quality of life and place. According to the new urban paradigm, using innovative systems, including creating ubiquitous cities with smart convergent systems, is a solution to overcome these urban problems. The ubiquitous city is one of the future cities where physical spaces and electronic spaces converge. This research is of a descriptive-analytical and review type to investigate and analyze the approach of ubiquitous cities in the information and communication technology age. The analysis shows that a ubiquitous city consists of space, place, information and communication technology, and people. The difference between this approach and the old approaches in urban planning is the adoption of information and communication technology as a means of change in the city. This city has specific effects on the city with four social, economic, spatial, and organizational dimensions. In line with dimensions, they are implementing democracy in a real way by creating participation among citizens, determining information and communication technology as a driver and engine of economic growth, removing time and place restrictions, rejecting the central place theory and an approach that both compact and sprawl forms are capable of development. From an organizational point of view, it also helps to balance the city's three social, economic, and spatial dimensions. Therefore, according to the key capabilities of information and communication technology, it is necessary to pay attention to the ubiquitous city approach, especially in capital cities, because it leads to the possibility of solving many problems, including transportation traffic, environmental pollution, and increasing economic competitiveness.



Methodology

This research was done in order to introduce the new approach of ubiquitous cities with descriptive-analytical method and using data collection in document-library format. The review of international and domestic studies with regard to the ubiquitous cities approach, shows the definitions, dimensions, indicators, elements and management strategies of this approach.



Results and discussion

The basic framework of this article is based on the review of international and domestic studies following the ubiquitous city approach, definitions, dimensions, indicators, elements, and management strategies. The findings show that the effects of the ubiquitous city can be investigated in four dimensions of sustainable urban development, including economic, social, spatial, and organizational development. In terms of economy and economic growth, the ubiquitous city is jointly called the engine of economic growth due to the combination of technology and construction industries. South Korea's experience in this field shows that after the Asian economic crisis in 1997 and after the world economic crisis in 2008, in both cases, innovative urban development models were used as solutions to solve the crisis not only at the city level but also at the national level. Socially, in the ubiquitous city, the amount of social preparation, information literacy to use the technologies used in these cities and the services that must be provided must be planned. Issues related to independence, privacy, security, trust, affordability, access, and participation in the benefits of these technologies, infrastructure, and services are significant. What is expected in the ubiquitous city socially is that ubiquitous city projects should be a stimulus for change in participation in urban development that provides an opportunity to implement democracy in a real way. From a spatial point of view, developments outside and different from other principles and thoughts of urban planning are implemented in the ubiquitous city. Suppose the wide and longitudinal city was less effective in the past today. In that case, the ubiquitous city is the only urban form due to its characteristics of eliminating time and space. The issues related to urban compactness or dispersion have yet to be discussed. In other words, a ubiquitous city includes both dense and scattered urban forms. On the other hand, ubiquitous city rejects some urban planning theories, including the central place theory. In this city, issues related to the centrality of science lose their credibility; because it is possible to communicate and receive services from any point of the city without the time and place restrictions. From the organizational point of view, providing services, infrastructures, technologies, and management systems that support the development of the ubiquitous city provides a lot of confidence and capabilities for city managers. Also, creating a balance between three social, economic, and spatial approaches is one of the other key organizational tasks in the ubiquitous city.



Conclusion

Examining the experiences of humanity in the direction of moving towards human development, especially urban development, shows that different approaches have been taken in different periods. What has recently made people focus on cities more than ever before is the discussion of sustainable development. On the other hand, the huge concentration of population in urban areas has added to this importance. Moving from sustainable development to green growth, carbon dioxide reduction, balanced development, virtual city, electronic city, smart city, and the ubiquitous city shows the issue's importance in the contemporary era. The use of information and communication technology has made the ubiquitous city approach different from previous approaches. This technology has caused fundamental changes in the attitude towards urban and even global issues and challenges. When information and communication technology is mentioned in the city context, it includes a set of urban infrastructures, architectures, software, computing and data analysis systems, and systems hardware sets throughout the city that are wireless or networks connected. These technologies are exerted to identify, receive, collect, store, process, combine, analyze, generalize, model, simulate, manage, exchange, and share data to control, understand, explore, and plan modern cities to achieve particular goals. The ubiquitous city's foundation depends on information and communication technology and has specific components and requirements. A certain level of information technology and telecommunication infrastructure is among the foundations of the ubiquitous city. Other technologies and tools are also used in this city according to the needs.