Urban Planning for City Leaders - Cities Alliance

Urban planning for city leadersFrom motorway to public spaceCheonggyecheon, SeoulRiver Cheonggyecheon, Seoul Korea © John DolciCheonggyecheon is a river that runs for 5.8 kilometres through the heartof Seoul in South Korea. In the 1950s, a significant flow of immigrantsresulted in the encroachment of informal settlements along the sides ofthe river which was then used as a sewer and became seriously pollutedand prone to flooding. In 1958, the river was covered with concrete and,in the early 1970s, a 16 metre-wide elevated motorway was built over it.All makeshift houses along Cheonggyecheon were demolished. At thetime, this intervention was considered to be an example of the successfulindustrialization and modernization of South Korea. By the late 1980s,however, the congested motorway came to be seen as the cause of poorair quality and environmental degradation. Furthermore, Cheonggyecheonacted as an urban fault line separating the dynamic area to the south ofthe motorway from the lagging and less competitive north.In 2003, led by Lee Myung-Bak, Seoul’s mayor at the time and now SouthKorea’s president, the metropolitan government decided to remove themotorway and restore the river. The Cheonggyecheon urban renewalproject was seen as an opportunity to address environmental, mobility,public space and economic development issues at the same time.44