What does the Citiverse mean for cities and communities – and who gets to shape it? As Local Digital Twins, AI, and immersive technologies become increasingly interconnected, the challenge is not simply to develop new digital capabilities, but also to ensure that they remain open, interoperable and tuned to local needs.
In a new joint brochure, Beyond Smart Cities: Exploring the Citiverse through European and Korean Approaches, Open & Agile Smart Cities & Communities (OASC) and Korea’s Smart City Association (SCA) examine how Europe and the Republic of Korea are approaching these questions from different starting points.
Europe’s emerging Citiverse ecosystem places particular emphasis on public governance, shared digital infrastructure and interoperability. Initiatives such as the LDT CitiVERSE EDIC, wider EU-funded research and implementation projects, and OASC’s own activities – including its role of co-lead of Track 16 Interoperable Citiverse within the ITU Global Initiative on AI, Digital Twins, and Virtual Worlds, and its Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs) – seek to support cities and communities in developing connected digital environments while retaining local choice and control, placing people at their centre.
Korea builds on substantial experience with its national smart-city programmes, integrated urban platforms, and digital twins. Its emerging Citiverse agenda focuses particularly on research and technical standardisation, including requirements for Citiverse platforms and AI-enabled interoperability.
These approaches offer complementary experiences, but neither represents a completed Citiverse model. Rather than proposing a single blueprint, the brochure explores opportunities for cooperation, for instance by connecting and testing emerging technical standards and governance frameworks with practical local applications in mind. Such cooperation requires addressing interoperability across technical, semantic, organisational, legal and cultural dimensions, learning from each other’s experiences and testing solutions in practice.
We invite cities, communities, researchers and technology partners to explore the brochure and join the conversation about how an open, interoperable and human-centric Citiverse can take shape.
Meet us in Barcelona: Paper copies will be available at the Smart City Expo World Congress, 3–5 November 2026, at the OASC booth within the European Twinning & Citiverse Plaza, Hall 3, Stand D71 as well as the Korean Pavilion, Hall 3, Stand D91.
For further information, please contact Dr Gert Hilgers (gert.hilgers@oascities.org).