On March 4, 2023, the Institute for Urban Humanities (IUH) at the University of Seoul (UOS) published Gated Communities and the Digital Polis: Rethinking Subjectivity, Reality, Exclusion, and Cooperation in an Urban Future. It consists of four extensive sections; there are several chapters in each section, 11 in all. It is a significant output when considering that the book was published as a series in international publisher Springer’s “Advances in 21st Century Human Settlements.”
The book includes research in various fields such as literature, philosophy, humanities, media studies, geography, architecture, and urban studies, focusing on “Digital Polis,” which has been conceptualized by IUH for the first time. Through the title and keyword “Gated Communities and the Digital Polis,” various theories of digital cities were examined in the current context of the accelerated digital transition. The book is expected to contribute to the globalization of urban humanities by integrating the research contents of Korean researchers based in IUH. In addition, it combines the perspectives of British and Turkish researchers as well. Two professors from IUH at UOS, Professor Chung Hee-won and Kim Kon, jointly compiled the book. The UOS Times interviewed them.
Interview
Q. Please introduce yourself.
Prof. Chung. Hello. I'm Chung Hee-won from IUH. I majored in English Language and Literature and have been working here since 2014.
Prof. Kim. My name is Kim Kon, and I am from IUH. After studying architecture, I studied urban studies more, and I am currently analyzing architecture and urban studies from a humanities perspective and conducting research on them.
Q. Could you introduce IUH at UOS?
Prof. Chung. Just as UOS specializes in urban science, IUH specializes in convergent research called urban humanities, in line with our university's vision. Since 2007, we have been working on a research project called “Humanistic Vision of Globalpolis” for more than 10 years, basically researching and writing. Furthermore, based on that project, we focused on popularizing urban humanities. Since 2019, we have also been working on a research project called “Humanistic Vision of Digital Polis” to explore the direction of urban humanities in the digital age. As I have a literature background, I have been conducting comprehensive research with humanities majors such as philosophy and history, as well as urban and media majors.
Prof. Kim. IUH was founded in 1992 as the Institute of Humanities. With funding from the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea in 2007, it has since been expanded and renamed as “Institute for Urban Humanities.” I believe IUH has three keywords: “city,” “community,” and “space.” Therefore, IUH is a research organization that brings together experts in various fields around these three aspects to present a vision of the academic paradigm of “urban humanities.”
Q. Please define and explain “Digital Polis” that IUH is conceptualizing autonomously.
Prof. Chung. The term “Digital Polis” is a concept that we have been inquiring into since 2019 when we started a project for the “Institute Programs in the Humanities & Social Sciences” of NRF. Considering that a lot of research is already underway on “Digital City,” IUH would like to emphasize the critical, alternative, and participatory direction that has been somewhat overlooked in urban research based on the critical view of the humanities through “Digital Polis.” This concept is still being developed in the course of the study and has various implications. Additional information is available in the preface of the book published in Open Access (OA).
Prof. Kim. As you can see from OA, the question “Why did you write Polis” is important as it has changed from global city to global police, and from digital city to digital police. From 2007 to 2019, “globalization” was an important issue, and starting from 2019, “Digitalization” has become the centerpiece; this is the reason why “Polis” became the term that represents one of the keywords that I mentioned earlier, community. The ancient Greek city-state of Polis became a community-state because of its geographical features, and the term Polis goes beyond simple space to include community, members, philosophy, and ideals. Therefore, IUH used “Polis” instead of “city” to describe the concept of encompassing urban communities. Prior to writing the book, we recruited people to participate in academic conferences related to this field in December 2021 and held an academic conference in May 2022. Later, we went through a process of publishing a book with more experts, including those who participated in this conference. Although the concept of the digital polis was presented in this process, it is difficult to conceptualize it as a single one because each field has a different direction and development pattern. Therefore, I consider this book as a stepping stone that helps leaders understand the concept comprehensively while reading.
Prof. Chung. In fact, I think readers will have different feelings depending on their personal thoughts and perspectives.
Q. Could you introduce the contents of the four chapters of the book?
Prof. Chung. Chapter 1, “The Digital Polis and the Formation of Technosocial Subjectivity,” is based on the diagnosis that cities have become technosocial media, and looks at how these technosocial subjects are constructed in digital polis from the perspective of philosophy, media, and literature. Chapter 2, “Real-and-Virtual Combined Urbanity in Seoul and Istanbul,” provides interesting case studies regarding Seoul and Istanbul. The part about Seoul critically introducing the S-Map and the Virtual Seoul project, and the section about Istanbul searching for the way real and virtual interlinking to form each other in gated communities.
Prof. Kim. Firstly, Chapters 1 and 2 contain humanities and social sciences, and the content of actual case studies of architecture and urban studies have been included. Chapter 3, “The Spatial Dimensions of Exclusion in the Digital Polis,” is a collection of Korean cases about how exclusion occurs in urban spaces and evolves in digital spaces. For example, it describes the exclusion that occurs in apartments, which are living spaces above the middle floor, and slums and what form of exclusion is expected to occur in the 2020s along with technological advances. While Chapter 3 was about such “exclusion,” Chapter 4 “Towards a More Emancipation and Empowering Digital Polis” highlights what could be a more participatory and expressive digital polis. The concluding section just mentions the classic declarations. For example, there is a summary of how social infrastructure, not physical infrastructure, can be defined in digital police, and it can be seen as a positive imagination of the topic.
Q. It is difficult to summarize the entire book in one sentence, but if you were to summarize it in one sentence, what would it be?
Prof. Chung. A must-read that expands the frontiers of urban humanities by recognizing what digital polis is, with the keyword “Gated Communities.”
Prof. Kim. A diverse approach to genuinely humanizing smart cities and smart urbanism.