Saving Seoul—Page 2
The idea of restoring Cheonggyecheon had been kicked around by urban-development experts for years before Lee adopted it as a mayoral campaign promise in 2002. Shortly after his victory, Lee confidently announced that he'd tear down the highway and renovate the stream, and that it would all be completed in just three years. Many experts were doubtful. "I thought he was nuts," says Karl Kim. "Where would the cars go?" But green initiatives like the stream project have increasing public support from Seoulites who have come to expect the city to work for them, not the other way around. Rising incomes play a part in the priority shift, but Kim Won Bae, a director at the Korean Research Institute for Human Settlements (KRIHS), a Seoul-based think tank, traces the change back to disasters like the collapse of the shoddily constructed Sampoong department store in 1995, which killed 501 people, and the economic crisis of 1997. "Those events made a lot of people think again about what economic growth was all about," he says. "Now people in Seoul want to enjoy life and be proud of themselves and their city. They want to say, 'I live in Seoul, and Seoul has this or that.'"

There's also mounting skepticism about the assumption that clean, attractive environs come at the cost of economic performance—a belief still widely held even in advanced Asian cities like Hong Kong. "If we don't place an emphasis on environmental friendliness, not only will citizens leave the city, but foreign investors won't choose Seoul," says Mayor Lee. "I believe that over the long term, choosing the environment serves a dual purpose." That choice can be made in part because the Korean economy is increasingly high tech and high glamour. Newer industries like telecom and film generate far less pollution than the heavy manufacturing that once defined South Korea. To capitalize on the country's edge in information technology, Seoul is developing the $2 billion Digital Media City (DMC), a next-generation office park built on a reclaimed toxic landfill. Lured by cheap land and eco-friendly surroundings like the World Cup Park, Korean IT companies including LG Telecom and Pantech are currently building research-and-development centers in the DMC, which is set to launch by 2010. The project will also feature Digital Media Street, a playground for tech companies to try out their latest gadgets, such as smart streetlights that brighten as people approach them. It all sounds suspiciously like a high-tech white elephant in the making—think of Hong Kong's expensive failure Cyberport. But the DMC only needs to give a sharp boost to South Korea's already thriving IT sector, not create it from scratch, which takes some of the pressure off. "Once it launches, we think the DMC will function as planned without interference by the city government," says Kang Chon, a city official who works on the office park. "After all, we don't want to act like communists."

Perish the thought, but it's doubtful that Seoul would have become so green without an activist government—and nowhere is that more evident than in its new transit system. With nearly 2.8 million automobiles in the city (compared to fewer than 600,000 in Hong Kong), Seoul traffic can be sclerotic. Lee made getting passenger cars off the roads a priority, but expanding the city's impressive subway system wasn't possible—adding a single kilometer of subway track can cost $100 million. So officials turned to the city's decaying buses, drawing up a plan to rationalize and expand routes, add 74 km of rapid bus-only median lanes on arterial streets, synchronize schedules with the subway and improve overall service. Buses would be equipped with gps sensors that would allow traffic officers working from a high-tech control room to track their movements throughout the city and adjust routes automatically for maximum efficiency. It was a big change, and the government decided to implement the entire revamp overnight on July 1, 2004.

The initial result was pandemonium. The new smart fare card malfunctioned, passengers couldn't understand the changes and some bus drivers didn't know the new routes. "It was like hell," says Eum Sung Jik, head of the Seoul Metropolitan Rapid Transit Corporation. The public revolted and the mayor was forced to apologize three days later, but the reforms stayed. "I was convinced that it was the right way to go," says Lee. The glitches were worked out, and within three months public opinion had turned in favor of the new system; bus ridership reversed a historic decline and began rising. Thousands of buses running on low-polluting compressed natural gas have been added to the fleet, and last year the U.S. green groups Environmental Defense and the Transport Research Board honored Lee with the Sustainable Transport Award for his reforms.

Some deride Cheonggyecheon as a developer's artificial idea of what urban ecology should be. "Environmentalists like to call it the 'fish tank,'" says Lee Cheol Jae, a water expert at the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement, who says it will cost nearly $2 million a year to pump water into Cheonggyecheon, which is often dry on its own. "It's a fish tank that cost 360 billion won." Over tea in Insadong, the cheery, traditional shopping district near downtown Seoul that she helped plan, architect Kim Jin Ai makes the case that Cheonggyecheon is just fast-track overdevelopment by another name. "In the 1970s and '80s, Mayor Lee put up huge developments, and he never really came out of that mindset," she says. "I think he made a very artificial stream." Insadong's pedestrian-friendly streets, narrow alleyways and traditional tea shops offer a more natural atmosphere than the heavily landscaped Cheonggyecheon, she maintains.

Lee doesn't dispute that Cheonggyecheon is artificial, but he believes that the stream's real value is as a symbol of the direction in which Seoul is headed. "We've made people realize that quality of life is important," he says. "We've set a new standard not just for Seoul, but for Korea." It's a standard that the rest of Asia can learn from, as its cities slowly wake up to the costs of development. Kim Won Bae of KRIHS tells the story of visiting Shanghai and meeting a Chinese urban planner who had a burning question: how many 100-m-high or taller buildings did Seoul have? "I asked her why she asked that," he says. "She was still in the age of triumphalism. Seoul was once in that period as well, but we have passed it." Hong Kong, Beijing—are you listening?

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