Update on Preparations of EcoMobility Festival

On Tuesday, August 20th, I was again at the festival area of the EcoMobility Festival. I wanted to see how far the EcoMobility preparations proceeded. You remember that the festival starts in September!. That’s 11 days after I took the pictures (and less than a week after this post).  I was surprised in many ways and I got a totally different impression of the neighborhood in comparison to my first time. Please read my other posts about the festival:

• General Introduction to EcoMobility World Festival
• Pictures of my first visit

Let’s start with the way towards the district. The road outside of the festival area got a new surface not too long ago. The street lines are still missing but the traffic is already operating there as usual.

Suwon is also installing new bus stations.

Then I entered the neighborhood from the same place like the last time. My impression was completely different because the constructions on this street were completed and cars have been everywhere. To take pictures in the middle of the road I always had to be careful that a car won’t run me over.

Look on the left side of the next picture. The cars are parked completely on the sidewalk. The intention of the planners was that they are parking just with one half of the car on the sidewalk. Like this the parking place occupies almost the complete sidewalk.

I showed you this parking place in the previous post about EcoMobility festival area and now, it’s full with cars. Where are they going to put all these cars during September?

One more picture of the main street:

The surface of the main road and the side streets is different. OK, we could argue about the meaning or function but my guess would be that it’s mainly out of financial reasons.

A lot of elder people are using their bicycle in this area. Right in front of me, the tire of the old man’s bike exploded and he had to push his bike.

On the main road minor constructions are still in process.

Not a lot of space for cars left! A car driver will think twice before passing through this area. However, as I said, there isn’t a lot of space for pedestrians as well.

Of course, the parking situation got worse. That was done intentionally to initiate a shift from cars to other transport methods. Some drivers seem stubborn and they are expressing their opinion about the new situation through illegal parking.

Bike taxis are now regularly operating there!

Streets leading to the main festival road are still undergoing construction. I think that they will be ready until September.

The urban landscape got clearly improved by the new streets and trees. Nevertheless, the presence of cars does harm to the atmosphere. I hope that September will change the mind of citizens and visitors.

Here are also constructions still going on.

The area carries a lot of potential. There are a lot of shops and buildings with various services (majority are religious services). The house/shop front is in almost every case directly on the sidewalk. There’s no buffer like a parking place in between. This is, as far as I remember, the only building that is set back from the street.

Ha, and you know what! All the garbage disappeared from the corners. Did the citizens learn their lessons or was it just cleaned recently?

The bike shop at the corner sells several types of bikes. They have a sticker with the slogan “A bicycle is sufficient”.

This street leads from the main road of the neighborhood to the palace. It feels like the constructions have been finished very recently.

The last time I showed you that some people put banners against the festival on their house fronts. They disappeared completely except for this one. I think it was overseen because it uses the same color and design as official banners but obviously the content is against car-free-measure.

 

 

Translation of the poster:

Haengkung!

Don’t disturb mother.

If you can’t endure this now, how will you endure it for a month!?!

A baby is screaming:

Papa! Mama! I’m hungry!

The next baby picture says that the baby is Haengkung (the neighborhood).

The red letters next to the skull: How will Haengkung end up?

So it says that the festival will harm the district. It shows a woman putting on makeup, who doesn’t take care of her baby. Clearly the mother is Suwon.

 

Then a bike taxi was moving towards us and the friendly lady invited us for a free ride. She took us once around the area. On the way back to drop us off, the battery was at the end. She switched to a second battery, which also was nearly empty. With the last electric power we made it back and she drove slowly on to recharge the vehicles.

The next picture doesn’t show a taxi stand. It’s a restaurant, which seems to be famous among taxi drivers in Suwon. I know such places in Seoul and they are always very good places to eat cheap and delicious food. A big conflict point will be this restaurant because the majority of it’s customers won’t be able to reach it for a whole month. There is a whole news article about that.

The urban developer in this area also didn’t forget about open spaces. A little bit of the main road you can find this small open space to relax.

I don’t know if this place is public but I can imagine that a lot of visitors are going to occupy these benches:

 

I hope that Suwon and ICLEI are able to finish all preparations in time and that the citizens are cooperative. I won’t visit the area anymore in August. The next visit will be the official opening on September 1.