Cities no longer compete solely based on population and area. The speed of AI adoption and its integration into industry, administration, and citizens' lives will determine future competitiveness. Cheonan is a leading advanced manufacturing city in South Korea, known for its concentration of semiconductor, display, and automotive parts industries. With the addition of AI, the city is preparing for a new leap forward.
Cheonan Mayor Jang Gi-soo has proposed the Cheonan-Asan AI-focused pilot city as a key strategy for his administration. Through a national project with a total budget of 610 billion won, he envisions establishing an AI verification platform, an AI industrial ecosystem, smart administration, and future-oriented urban services.
His vision includes creating an AI support center, a city support center, and an AI village, along with implementing autonomous driving and data-driven urban operations to make Cheonan the standard for South Korea's AI future cities.
The question is clear.
Can Cheonan truly become a new model for South Korea's AI future cities?
The AI-focused pilot city will change Cheonan's future.
Mayor Jang's AI strategy is encapsulated in a single project: the Cheonan-Asan AI-focused pilot city.
This project, part of a Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport initiative, is not just a smart city. It aims to transform the entire city into an AI verification space, simultaneously establishing data-driven administration, AI urban services, and an AI industrial ecosystem.
Cheonan plans to create an AI support center, a city support center, and an AI village, starting with AI service verification in Budang-dong and expanding to the Cheonan Station area. Mayor Jang emphasized, "Cheonan-Asan is the optimal location for South Korea's best AI-focused pilot city," and stated it will be a top priority for his administration.
In the AI era, urban competitiveness will depend not on the number of factories but on how effectively AI is verified and disseminated.
Cheonan's greatest strength lies in its industrial base.
Cheonan is a representative advanced manufacturing city in South Korea, with a concentration of semiconductor packaging, display, and automotive electronics industries.
AI will further strengthen this manufacturing base.
Factories will evolve into smart factories where AI controls production processes, predicts quality, and optimizes supply chains. Mayor Jang has proposed transitioning existing manufacturing into future industries combined with AI.
When AI meets manufacturing, productivity increases, defect rates decrease, and global competitiveness is enhanced.
Cheonan is one of the cities where AI and manufacturing can naturally integrate.
AI administration will change citizens' lives.
Mayor Jang views AI as a key tool for administrative innovation.
AI can process civil complaints, manage urban operations, oversee traffic, and deliver public services more quickly and accurately.
The Cheonan-Asan AI-focused pilot city has set data-driven administrative innovation as one of its core goals.
Administration will rely on data rather than experience, enabling citizens to receive necessary services more swiftly.
In the AI era, administration will transform from a paper-processing organization into a platform that operates the city in real-time.
Autonomous driving will shape future transportation.
Mayor Jang sees autonomous driving as a key pillar of future transportation.
The AI-focused pilot city will also include AI-based mobility services.
Plans are in place to implement autonomous buses, smart traffic systems, and AI-based traffic control systems, expanding these initiatives throughout Cheonan. Recently, he also proposed introducing autonomous buses linked to the AI-focused pilot city.
Cheonan serves as a transportation hub connecting the metropolitan area and Chungcheong region.
With AI managing transportation, mobility can become safer and more efficient.
Universities and businesses collaborate to build an AI ecosystem.
The AI industry cannot grow solely through businesses.
Research institutions, universities, and startups must come together.
Mayor Jang announced plans to establish a public-private-academic cooperation system involving 14 universities, businesses, and research institutions in Cheonan.
The AI-focused pilot city is significant not as an industrial complex project but as an initiative to create an innovative ecosystem where AI talent, technology, and businesses can grow together.
When talented individuals gather, businesses will follow, leading to increased investment and job opportunities.
Cheonan aims to build this virtuous cycle.
Toward an AI innovation hub in Chungcheong.
Mayor Jang envisions Cheonan not as a city growing in isolation but as part of a metropolitan AI city alongside Asan.
The AI-focused pilot city is a joint project between Cheonan and Asan.
Through inter-city cooperation, the strategy is to cultivate the entire Chungcheong region as South Korea's AI innovation hub.
In the AI era, connectivity between cities is more important than competition.
The collaboration between Cheonan and Asan could mark the beginning of a new metropolitan AI economic zone.
Mayor Jang's AI strategy connects industry, city, and administration.
The AI-focused pilot city, AI administrative innovation, autonomous driving, and the development of the semiconductor industry all aim toward a single goal: to establish Cheonan as the standard for South Korea's AI future cities.
South Korea is a manufacturing powerhouse.
Now, AI must be integrated into manufacturing.
If Cheonan becomes the first city to realize this transformation, the Chungcheong region has ample potential to emerge as a new axis of AI growth.
Mayor Jang Gi-soo:
Since being elected as the ninth mayor of Cheonan, Jang Gi-soo has positioned AI as a core growth strategy for his administration. He is prioritizing the Cheonan-Asan AI-focused pilot city as a national project, concentrating efforts on establishing AI support centers, city support centers, AI villages, data-driven administrative innovations, and the development of autonomous and smart city services.
He also envisions combining Cheonan's semiconductor and display industries with AI to grow into a hub for South Korea's AI future industries.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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