Smart district with the comparison on urban studies of internet infrastructure and new digital activities

An idea of Smart City conceptually requires elevating the quality of life. Smart City operates not only at the city scale widely and holistically but also focuses on the community scale. Following the Thailand National Strategy 2018-2037, the Smart City presently runs by the government and internet provider services via top-down development. By far the shape of Chiang Mai city is sprawling due to uncertain development plans. Government serves as the only centralized infrastructure without understanding and elevating the existing social and community learning. Presently, new people and businesses happens on new kinds of convergence activities such as service apartments for expat and coworking spaces for digital nomads. Providing high speed internet service is not the only key for city development, but a Smart City must also be collaboratively planned by learning about smart lifestyle and way of living. Presently no community-led transition with conceptual framework and stakeholders for collaborative Smart City development. This research aims to understand the relations of internet infrastructure and digital disruption activity in the city towards creating the understanding of Smart City, specifically in a case of Chaing Mai city. The methodology discerns how the people in Chiang Mai encounter in the city and live with smart activities through analyzing maps of relations from on-site surveyed mapping and data-visualized mapping. Research tools consist of a combination between interviews and surveys for plotting social activities on maps, and online data platforms which visualizes data on maps such as Google API, Nperf and Opensignal application. The research outcome is to analyze and redefine Smart City under 2 categories; firstly, "Smart community," which is the network of people which connects with convergence lifestyle and, secondly "Smart district" or a potential area which appears with the access to high-speed internet and social participations.