, and civic participation in decision-making illustrates well the changing approaches to urban development and urban design in the metropolitan Seoul.
Several traditional markets developed around Bupyeong in the past. Expansion of the new shopping centres and the economic crisis during the nineties resulted in their decline. Local merchants and street vendors, some of them having worked there for more than thirty years, faced a danger of loosing their business. In order to revive the local market and protect their jobs the Bupyeong Market Merchants Cooperative presented the local government a petition in 1998, to reconstruct the market into what they called “pedestrian and cultural street.” However, after the opening the merchants ran into maintenance problems as well as into conflicts with illegal street vendors. The merchants established a committee to independently manage the street and direct its future use. They also achieved a mutual agreement with the street vendors on a joint use and management of the street, which opened the way for its future transformation.
Working with the Urban Action Network, an NGO from Seoul with a long experience in community-based urban design, the merchants organised several workshops since 2005 and improved the urban design and management of the street. The most visible result of such participatory urban design process was the construction of the small pocket parks and improvements of the public space, which attracted a lot of attention. The reconstruction of the street successfully revived the local economy, created new civic culture and the Bupyeong Culture Street now attracts hundreds of citizens daily. Yet the urban design in this case should not be seen as a finished project but rather as an on-going process, where its elements are constantly adopted according to the changing needs of users.
Gwanghwamun Plaza is the most important public space in Seoul and is located in the historic centre of the city. The plaza has a long and turbulent history. The original name comes from the Gwanghwamun Gate, which connects the plaza with the nearby royal palace. During the Japanese occupation of Korea the colonial government built a large governmental building between the royal palace and plaza, destroying the traditional symbolic relation of the two. Later the South Korean government also built an administrative complex right next to the plaza. The plaza was therefore always an important place, where the state institutions were located and their power was represented. Yet the plaza is also a place where citizens contested the state power. Several historic events took place on the plaza, which is sometimes called the “prototype public space in Korea.” The history of the Gwanghwamun Plaza therefore not only represents the state but also the South Korean civic society.
Yet decades of rapid urbanisation turned the Gwanghwamun Plaza into a large expressway rather than public plaza. The urban design competition aimed to reconstruct the plaza was organized in 2007 and the new plaza was opened to the public in 2009. Its urban design refers to different Korean historic events and personalities and allows flexibility in terms of adopting the plaza to the changing requirements in the future. The metropolitan government actually selected the basic urban design through a popular voting, which favoured a reconstruction of the plaza with two roads on its both sides. The new plaza hence faces the five-lane road sections on its sides, which prevents a direct access for pedestrians from the surrounding area.
The Bupyeong Culture Street and Gwanghwamun Plaza were aimed to reconstruct the existing street into pedestrian public space, integrating the local history and culture as an important part of the urban design. Yet the restoration of the Gwanghwamun Plaza lacks a meaningful relation to the local history and culture. It superficially resembles a theme park for tourists rather than the most important public space in Seoul. Its careful historic restoration seem to have come second to the construction of new t