About the Department

A city comprises of social/cultural elements, citizens and activity, and physical characteristics such as land and infrastructures. These constitute a city in close interrelation, forming a system and developing through a cycle of growth, stagnation, and decline. This process entails various urban problems (overcrowding, traffic congestion, urban coalescence, regional disconnection, social pathologies, etc.), and comprehensive approaches are required to solve them.

To solve modern urban problems, the engineering approach based on a wide range of background knowledge in various humanities and social sciences is required. Furthermore, to diagnose and prevent future urban problems in advance, it is necessary to develop a future-oriented city that meets the demands of the 21st century in line with future urban paradigm changes. This requires the convergence of integrated knowledge and technology in the 21st-century the creation and refinement of a new urban development paradigm that combines creative new urban values and ideologies on top of traditional urban values from industry, university, research, and government.

The Department of Urban Engineering at INU researches human-centered future cities of the 21st century by solving various urban problems and linking engineering approaches (land use, urban spatial structure, advanced transportation, urban ecology, approach-friendly rivers, green urban environment, etc.) with humanities and social sciences approaches (statistical demography, activity mechanisms, social ecology, urban culture, geography, governance, etc.) to study urban areas comprehensively and systematically.

To create future-oriented and sustainable urban values required by the 21st century, we must develop innovative cities that converge the functions of future cities, such as knowledge-based cities, intelligent cities, humanistic cities, amenity cities, cultural cities, network cities, and educational cities. Therefore, the Department of Urban Engineering at INU provides essential knowledge and deepen expertise to solve today's urban problems, materialize the convergence paradigm of innovative cities for the 21st century, and create new ideas and values.

In particular, we introduce a learning system through an integrated knowledge convergence process that connects industry, university, research, and government in diagnosing and solving urban problems to produce urban engineering experts who are competent in theory and practice. In addition, we develop, accumulate, and educate future-oriented and creative technologies for ubiquitous cities and transportation based on ubiquitous technologies that have emerged as the mainstream of the 21st-century information revolution to achieve the paradigm of future cities. We create high-value-added cities through addressing social, economic, transportation, environmental, sustainability, disconnection, and cultural problems in modern cities.