A £28 billion ($40 billion) project hailed as the world's first smart city has faded into a 'Chernobyl-like ghost town'.
The 'high-tech utopia' of Songdo on South Korea's northeast coast was built from scratch and designed around technology, with computers built into its streets and condos to control traffic and let neighbours hold video chats.
Residents were promised a city of the future, with remote-controlled front doors and pneumatic rubbish chutes that 'sucked' garbage from your home to later be recycled to generate electricity.
But eerie photos show that, just over 15 years since the Songdo project began, the city is still less than half-built, with one citizen remarking it's like 'living in a deserted prison'.
The brainchild of property developers and the South Korean government, the vision was to construct a new way of thinking for over 300,000 residents, spread out over 600 hectares of reclaimed land from the Yellow Sea.
Songdo was to push boundaries in the way cities dealt with technology, environment, business and education. Built within 25 miles (40km) of Seoul, it was billed as the antithesis of the suffocating, over-populated capital.
But the £28 billion ($40 billion) project, launched in 2002, has struggled to bring in big companies and investors despite hosting South Korea's tallest skyscraper. Read full article..