Sustainable Smart Cities and Industrial Ecosystem: Structural and Relational Changes of the Smart City Industries in Korea

• Main Authors: Sung-Su Jo, Hoon Han, Yountaik Leem, Sang-Ho Lee
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-09-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: smart city; smart city industry; industrial ecosystem; input–output analysis; structural path analysis
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/17/9917

This paper examines the changing industrial ecosystem of smart cities in Korea using both input–output and structural path analysis from 1960 to 2015. The industry type of the input–output tables used in the Bank of Korea was reclassified into nine categories: Agriculture and Mining, Traditional Manufacturing, IT Manufacturing, Construction, Energy, IT Services, Knowledge Services, Traditional Services and other unclassified. The paper identified the changing patterns of an industrial ecosystem of smart cities in Korea. The study found that smart industries such as smart buildings and smart vehicles are anchor industries in Korean smart cities, and they are positively correlated with three other industries: IT Manufacturing, IT Services and Knowledge Services. The results of the input–output and structural path analysis show that the conventional industrial structure of labor-intensive manufacturing and diesel and petroleum cars has been transformed to the emerging high-tech industries and services in smart cities. Smart industries such as IT Manufacturing, IT Services and Knowledge Services have led to sustainable national economic growth, with greater value-added than other industries. The underlying demand for smart industries in Korea is rapidly growing, suggesting that other industries will seek further informatization, automatization and smartification. Consequently, smart industries are emerging as anchor industries which create value chains of new industries, serving as accelerators or incubators, for the development of other industries.