Categories: General News and UpdatesGyeonggi ProvincePublic Infrastructure

Pictures of EcoMobility Festival Area in June

After the last post introduced the EcoMobility World Festival to readers, this time I want to show the current progress of the EcoMobility Festival area preparations. On Sunday, July 23rd, I visited the prospective festival area. If you want to transform a neighborhood to a car-free area, it takes much more than just removing cars. Long-term changes have to done in the built environment. Let’s start our tour at the beginning of the main street:

The constructions are already progressed much further than I thought. The official construction schedule says that the construction of the main street will be finished by July 22nd.

Most of the main street is already completed. The last missing spots are the manholes and its cover.

Instead of continuing on the main road I took a look at an alley. The walls have been painted recently and there have been a lot of creatively arranged flower pots. It was really nice. The next two pictures show the flower pots.

Then I was a little bit surprised: There was a large parking lot.

The worst thing about that: It seemed to belong to a church, which means that it’s private property. How do you develop such an area? In this case, Suwon has to buy the property or find an agreement with the owner. During September this space suits well as a festival area with tents, stage and so on.

This small monk was also a part of the improvement of the alley.

My impression was that this is a very old neighborhood with a lot of retail and services related to religion. There were dozens of fortune tellers or buddhist life counselors (or other services related to religions). The houses are mainly two to three stories high and in between there are also some hanoks hiding. The population of the area seems to consist mostly of elderly. So the question is how can the old inhabitants give up cars for one month (or even longer)?

Some have been still very active and there I saw a lot of residents cycling.

Everywhere around the area you can see banners who show that the neighborhood is preparing for this festival. This banner says that everybody joins in the preparations. They want to make a bright and lively new urban landscape.

Actually, not everybody likes this festival…

Retailers and merchants see their existence at risk. When I was there, most of the shops have been closed due to the constructions. However, I strongly believe that if they are a patient until September, they will see thousands of visitors and consumers in that district. The area has the potential to stay permanently a sightseeing spot. The quality of space gets raised and more pedestrians can be expected in this area.

This banner says that the festival doesn’t feed us and that basic rights of shop owners have to be protected.

The third banner (all of them have been side by side along shop fronts) says that the EcoMobility kills all shop owners.

Do the shop owners prefer the previous situation?

That’s how the area looks like without/before the transformation. Cars are parked on both sides of the road and no sidewalk for pedestrians. I don’t want to pass through that area because I know that every second I can get hit by a car.

The next great thing is that the festival attracts business which are related to sustainable transport methods. The above picture shows a coffeehouse, which sells bicycles next to coffee. So one cappuccino and a mountain-bike please!

Beneath you can see a bike store. The shop sign is new and during the festival this shop can expect a lot of potential buyers.

A big problem is human behavior regarding waste management. The residents aren’t very familiar with waste bins and that domestic garbage will be collected once a week. Full garbage bags are gathered here on the street corner.

This whole festival is going to put makeup on the neighborhood and the organizers want that it looks like a role-model for sustainable transport. However under the makeup there’s still the same person, who doesn’t really care about the environment, likes to use their car and throws garbage onto the streets.

Suwon has to react to that. It cannot be solved through CCTV and some posters. I don’t know what an effective solution is. Education about environment is very important but there are more creative solutions necessary.

Here’s one more example of a garbage corner:

Unfortunately, constructions are very unpleasant for local residents. This side-ally isn’t able to pass, dust is a big problem and it’s noisy (they even work on Sundays!).

But hey, that’s how the result is going to look like. Great, isn’t it?

The festival is going to introduce alternative methods of transport. Here you can see car-sharing and electric cars. The festival cars are very colorful. However the majority of the vehicles are going to be man-powered or like the following picture shows, man and electric power:

Nikola

Co-Author of Kojects. Interested in Sustainable Transportation, Urbanism and Korea.

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View Comments

Chris (mydogknowsKorean) says:

July 10, 2013 at 4:28 pm

Reblogged this on Seoul for my soul and commented:
wow, so interesting. I like the idea of the festival. I see how it could be a pain for residents and shop owners to be put out for a while, but the results could be amazing. I know it's hard to change-especially when you get older. But some change is good! Some change is necessary!! Thank you for your post and all the pictures. Fighting!!