The Making of a Sustainable Wireless City? Mapping Public Wi-Fi Access in Shanghai

Mingfeng Wang, Haifeng Liao (), Juan Lin, Li Huang, Chengcheng Gu and Yehua Dennis Wei
Additional contact information
Mingfeng Wang: Center for Modern Chinese City Studies, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China
Juan Lin: Center for Modern Chinese City Studies, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China
Li Huang: Department of Geography, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844, USA
Chengcheng Gu: Center for Modern Chinese City Studies, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China
Yehua Dennis Wei: Department of Geography, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112-9155, USA

Sustainability, 2016, vol. 8, issue 2, 1-15

Abstract: In the context of the global information economy, ready access to the Internet is critical to a city’s competitiveness, which has prompted a number of cities to launch plans to establish wireless networks. Most literature on the development of wireless cities focuses on cities in Western countries, and few have discussed how Chinese cities have adopted wireless technologies in their urban infrastructure development efforts. This paper examines recent development and spatial distribution of public Wi-Fi access in Shanghai, a leading business hub in China. We mapped Wi-Fi hotspots through the government sponsored “i-Shanghai” project and China Mobile Communications Corporation (CMCC). We find that while telecommunication providers have been proactively deploying WLAN (wireless local area network?a proxy of public Wi-Fi or wireless access) hotspots in Shanghai, neither government sponsored WLAN hotspots nor facilities established by CMCC could cover the old traditional neighborhoods in the central city and sub-districts in remote rural areas. We also address the development of a more sustainable wireless city in Shanghai with a particular focus on digital divide and social equity issues.

Keywords: Wi-Fi; wireless cities; GIS spatial analysis; digital divide; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/2/111/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/2/111/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:8:y:2016:i:2:p:111-:d:62873

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().