Seoul’s 100-Year Plan

On April 1st, Park Won-Soon introduced the measure to design a basic plan of Seoul about the development in the next 100 years, in short “Seoul 100 Plan” (or in Korean “미래 서울 100년 도시계획 기반마련”). Here, I’ll introduce the idea behind this move and show some details of the main presentation.

Seoul’s mayor Park Won-Soon begun his presentation with the comment that urban planning isn’t only about managing land, it’s about many different areas like culture, education, welfare and so on. It’s important to organize the usage of space well. In the last 100 years of Seoul’s history, unequally dispersed development and economic growth was more important than balanced development and citizen’s life and participation. From now on, the focus lies on the whole city, needs of Seoul’s citizens (hereby, esp. needs of an aging society) and sustainability.

 

Content of the Seoul 100 Plan

The following picture is a slide of the mayor’s presentation. It shows how citizens can express their opinions and it contains key words like density, public participation, accessibility, design of buildings and so on.

Furthermore, the planning process for Seoul 100 Plan is divided into four parts. The first part can be translated as principles and standards. It’s like the framework of the whole plan. Part 2 is an elaborate plan design focusing on two areas: the area close to the Han River and on the living space. Here suddenly, Park’s presentation shows detailed plans to illustrate how it’s going to be realized. Part 3 is about proposing a urban redevelopment (or directly translated “revivement”) and land resource management. Attention will be put on certain areas of Seoul. The last part is about co-operative governance. As you might know, Park Won-Soon always emphasizes participation of citizens and a citizen-focused development.

The following slide shows how the steps work together. The first three parts are settled in the frame of the plan and the fourth part functions like  a  place of discussion.  That’s the basic concept of the whole plan drafting process.

It contains a great message: The first three parts are the tree and the fourth one is a farmer who takes care of this tree and later harvests the fruits. The time plan for the whole process looks like that (easier to read if you click on it):

The content of the first part (here in green) is going to be completed until the end of this year. Part Two takes until 2015. The longest duration of all has the third part. Participation of citizens is an on-going process but the formal foundation is going to be laid out until the end of next year.

If you understand Korean, you can watch the press-event of the presentation on April 1st here (around 20 mins of presentation, 20 mins of question).

 

Conclusion of Seoul 100 Plan

The goal isn’t to forecast the development of Seoul until 2100. It’s neither about to decide how every spot in Seoul should look like in detail. Seoul’s 100-Year Plan intends to build an basic framework for the whole area of Seoul. Something like this is very important to reach balanced development. The biggest danger is that the next mayor may abolish this framework. Seoul’s city administration plays an essential role in enforcing this plan, even beyond time limits of elections.

 

 

Sources and Related Links: Official Seoul Blog | Presentation File