se, and civic participation in decision-making as compared to the prevailing approach in the past. At the same time there is an important difference between the recent metropolitan scale urban design projects, which aim to promote the economic competitiveness and global appeal of the city, and the community-based urban design, focused on the quality of everyday life in the city.
The urban design for the Gwanghwamun Plaza, seem to have more in common with the urban development of Seoul in the past. The local scale projects, such as the Bupyeong Culture Street, are on contrary more concerned with preserving the local history and culture, strengthening the social cohesion in the city, creating places of intense social interaction, and fostering civic participation in decision-making. They may in this way provide a departure from the established approaches to urban development and urban design and offer successful examples of community-based urban design for the future in the metropolitan Seoul.
The article was first published on the Asian Urban Epicenters blog.