Seoul: from a destroyed city to the world's most wired metropolis

Résumé du document

Seoul and its suburbs host half the Koreans living on the southern part of the Korean peninsula, that is 25 million living souls. Seoul is 2000 years old, and has been the capital of Korea for 600 years. Tradition and history are nowadays still deeply rooted in the city, but coexist with the dynamics of the 21th century.

Seoul was destroyed during the Korean War: the way it is built today is still deeply related to this destruction. It was quickly rebuilt and thus appears as a socialist city. Yet since the end of the twentieth century, Seoul is evolving and becoming a globalized city. Its urban policy is becoming more and more complex. The spatial spaces are reevaluated, a new spatiality emerges. The regionalization process leads to the development of the suburban areas but those are linked to the central city, what is urban cannot be thought separately from what it not urban. This spatial reorganization began with tan important economic crisis in 1997 which lead to the involvement of the international organizations in Korean politics. The change in urban policy was also influenced by the democratization that emerged in South Korea in the same years.

We state that Seoul has started to become a post metropolis since the end of the twentieth century, and is one nowadays. Our main focus will be to analyze the way 1997 appears as a turning point. After having considered the urbanization of the city at the wake of the war, we'll see how it evolved after the 1997 crisis and along with the democratization process. Then we will study the aspects of Seoul that make it a post metropolis: the digitization and the city and its globalization.

Extraits

[...] In 1988 it hosted the Olympics Games: it was a huge opportunity to bring international attention to the country, at a time when the country was still under the dictatorship, not the one of Park Chung-hee who was assassinated in 1979, but under the one of his “successor”, Chun Doo-hwan. Chun Doo-hwan submitted South Korea application hoping that hosting the Olympics would legitimize his authoritarian regime. But the reverse took place: it increased the political pressure for democratization, with demonstrations multiplying starting 1987. It also gave the exchange between South Korea and the other countries a forward thrust by showing to the world Korea's economic miracle. [...]

[...] The government invested a lot of money to develop the fiber. In 1997 Korea had 1.6 million Internet users. The development was striking and in 2004, there were 29 million Internet users, and of the Koreans households were equipped with broadband penetration, making Seoul the world's most wired city. Hong Kong had by this time only of its household wired with high-speed connection, followed by Singapore with New York with Los Angeles with The first European city is Barcelona with only a quarter of its household equipped[2]. [...]

[...] Gangnam To appeal to more and more people, Seoul metropolis has also interesting projects. One of them is Songdo (송도) International City. Seoul city is far from the international airport, Incheon, located on an inland some two hours far from Seoul. Incheon is still within the perimeter of the metropolis but is isolated because apart from the airport there is nothing in Incheon. This is a limit to appeal for example to businessmen who do not come to Korea to visit Seoul and its reconstructed traditional villages, but to close a deal. [...]

[...] Here comes the concept of smart city. Seoul corresponds pretty well to this concept, also known as "digital city". A smart city is a city functionally and structurally improved by the use of new technologies. It is a concept in perpetual evolution, and one that correspond particularly well to Seoul, the capital of South Korea. A smart city maximizes every aspect of what constitute a city by working notably on the coordination between all the infrastructures. A smart city uses technologies to strengthen its growth and the happiness of the inhabitants. [...]

[...] I believe that this is an unquestionable strength, that can be seen action” in the development of internet in the metropolis. One should also not forget that the city became to change only in the late 1990s. What's more, the “ugliness” of Seoul, or we could say the incoherence of the architecture, the disorganization of its urban landscape, is precisely what makes the city charming. Bibliography - Anthony M Townsend (2005) Seoul: birth of a broadband metropolis. Environment and Planning Planning and Design 2007, volume 413 - Jong-Sung Hwang and Young Han Choe (2013). Smart Cities. Seoul: a case study. [...]