Seoul City Establishes 'Smart Meeting System' to Enhance Expertise in Urban and Architectural Review

Main Screen for Committee Review

[Asia Economy Reporter Donghyun Choi] The Seoul Metropolitan Government’s Urban Planning Committee, which reviews and advises on urban and architectural plans within the city and makes key decisions, is transitioning from paper-based meetings to smart meetings utilizing advanced digital technology for the first time in 70 years.

On the 3rd, Seoul announced that it has established a ‘Smart Meeting System’ specialized for urban and architectural committees. This system began operation starting with the 12th Urban Planning Committee meeting held the day before.

Since the committee’s formation in 1949, deliberations have been conducted using limited information through paper documents or individual laptops. In conventional meeting rooms, materials were printed on paper or viewed on individual laptops during meetings, which limited the ability to instantly verify various review information such as case histories, site conditions, landscape simulations, and traffic/environmental impacts, making quick and accurate communication difficult. However, now a smart review era utilizing virtual reality (VR) and 3D data comprehensively has begun.

The city introduced a three-dimensional virtual Seoul environment as a committee function to enable a more comprehensive review of cases and enhance review expertise, allowing faster and more accurate decision-making. In the future, during urban development, pre-simulation through Virtual Seoul at the review stage will allow analysis of impacts on the city (such as sunlight exposure of surrounding buildings and landscape) in advance, and VR devices can be used to check the current status of the target area.

Seoul established the ‘Seoul Urban and Architectural Open Meeting Room’ equipped with related devices and systems on the first floor of the Seoul Urban Architecture Center in Donuimun Museum Village, covering an area of 280.4㎡. The meeting space has a total of 33 seats, each equipped with a monitor and smart board, as well as equipment such as kiosks and VR devices.

The system also includes an ‘interactive meeting system’ that allows participants to write or draw directly on the smart board during meetings and share the content in real time, enabling the development of ideas and the derivation of more rational outcomes.

Additionally, through the ‘Integrated Management System for Urban and Architectural Committees,’ it is possible to immediately check review-related information such as the history of submitted cases and site conditions. This is expected to help make accurate decisions quickly. In particular, Seoul plans to operate the newly created ‘Seoul Urban and Architectural Open Meeting Room’ as a specialized meeting room for promoting the ‘Urban and Architectural Innovation Plan,’ which aims to create creative new landscapes in uniform apartment complexes. The core of the Urban and Architectural Innovation Plan is for the city, as the urban planning decision-maker, to work with residents throughout the entire redevelopment process to encourage three-dimensional architectural design that considers the region’s landscape and historical-cultural context. The goal is to enhance the expertise of decision-making and the execution power of creative urban and architectural projects through innovation in committee operations. Furthermore, the city will utilize the Urban and Architectural Open Meeting Room not only for urban and architectural meetings but also as a communication and learning space accessible to the public, experts, and citizens alike. It will be opened to the general public once the COVID-19 situation stabilizes.

Lee Jeong-hwa, Director of the Seoul Urban Planning Bureau, said, “As the importance of creative urban and architectural projects that will change Seoul’s cityscape for the next 100 years is emerging beyond simply constructing buildings, it is time for the operation of urban and architectural committees that make key decisions to evolve. We expect that the establishment of a specialized smart meeting system for urban and architecture integrating advanced digital technology will enable committee reviews to be conducted more swiftly and accurately.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.