I've been researching the worlds first true ubiquitous city, New Songdo City, currently under construction in South Korea, with an intended deadline of 2015 for completion. The city will feature all of its information systems, from business to medical, being linked and will feature extensive technology powered by CDMA wireless communication RFID tags. It is intended to be a test bed for many emerging technologies.
Day to day living in New Songdo will be centered aroud residents smart-card house key. This one card will be used to lock and unlock your house, pay for public transport, access free public use bikes, pay for parking meters and basically anything else you can think of. When I read about this I couldn't help thinking of an idea that's briefly mentioned in the start of Philip K Dick's novel A Scanner Darkly: 'Wednesday in downtown L.A., the Westwood section. Ahead, one of those giant shopping malls surrounded by a wall that you bounced off like a rubber ball - unless you had a credit card on you and passed it through the electronic hoop.'
A clear problem with the creation of purpose buit U-cities like this is that they make no provision for the poor. The very concept of these cities is discriminatory to the less affluent members of society, but I guess if you've invested billions of dollars in a nice, shiny new city where technology is more important than people, then you really dont want hoboes and beggars cluttering it up.
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