Abstract
We opted for the somewhat broad term contraction in this chapter’s title because it best captures what this chapter is about: shrinking the footprint of channel-ways given over to private cars and trucks and reassigning this space to other, less disruptive, more people-oriented uses, such as greenways, pedestrian zones, bike lanes, and public parks. More common terms are traffic calming and road dieting, although such measures are less about reclaiming land and more about slowing traffic flows to the pace of cyclists and pedestrians, or thereabouts. Even more extreme measures have been introduced to rein in the amount of pavement given over to cars, notably the demolition of elevated freeways, replaced by boulevards, greenways, and linear parks. Each is a different form of pulling back in recognition that the past half-century of transportation policies and investments in many corners of the world have been tilted heavily in favor of auto-mobility, at the expense of community quality and place-making. Contraction, we believe, is an apt term to describe a host of actions, from intersection neckdowns to freeway teardowns, aimed at reordering mobility priorities in favor of more sustainable modes and giving as much attention to place-making as to movement. Contraction is a form of land reclamation, which, as discussed in this chapter, involves reassigning land for place-making and green mobility purposes.
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Notes
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Cheong Gye Cheon, which means “clear valley stream,” had long been a source of fresh water and “heart and soul” of urban life in Seoul, going back to the fourteenth century. During the Chosun dynasty (1392–1910), city dwellers did their laundry in the stream and often socialized on its banks. After the Korean War (1950–1953), the stream’s character quickly changed when temporary refugee housing was built along its banks. Untreated waste was dumped directly into the waterway, turning it into a veritable cesspool and eventually prompting city officials to cover the stream with an elevated freeway.
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The CGC freeway, 50–80 meters in width and 6 kilometers in length, opened in 1971 in the heart of central Seoul. Below the road were the running stream and a sewer trunk line. The CGC freeway quickly became an important conduit for movement to and within central-city Seoul, gaining importance as new towns began to populate the region’s periphery in the 1980s and 1990s. However, time quickly took its toll on the facility. A 1992 study by the Korean Society of Civil Engineers found that more than 20 percent of the freeway’s steel beams were seriously corroded and in need of urgent repair. The Seoul Metropolitan Government immediately began repairing the road’s understructure; however, because of concerns about the road’s long-term safety and stability, this was seen as a stopgap to either reconstructing the freeway or tearing it down. See Robert Cervero, “Urban Reclamation and Regeneration in Seoul, Republic of Korea,” Low Carbon Cities: Transforming Urban Systems, ed. S. Lehmann (London: Routledge, 2015), 224–34.
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The CGC project was not without controversy. Besides concerns over possible increases in traffic congestion, many small shopkeepers and merchants opposed the project for fear of losing business. Alongside the former elevated freeway was an assembly of small-scale shops and markets selling shoes, apparel, tools, electronic goods, and appliances. In 2000, more than 200,000 merchants and 60,000 shops were within 2 kilometers of the freeway. To some, the freeway-to-greenway conversion threatened to alter the existing tradeshed and disrupt the flow of customers and logistics. Moreover, informal vendors would lose their spots under the freeway, in the past an unwanted place where they, and they alone, could ply their trade rent-free. After intensive negotiations, the Seoul Metropolitan Government was able to head off opposition by financially compensating merchants and relocating a number of shops to a newly constructed market center south of the Han River that was easily accessible by highways and public transit.
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A location quotient (LQ) measures an area’s industrial or occupational specialization relative to a larger geographic unit, in our case the proportion of total workers in creative class industries for distance bands of up to 1,000 meters from the greenway entrances or motorway on-ramps relative to all workers in the Seoul region located beyond the 1,000-meter buffer; see http://www.bea.gov/faq/index.cfm?faq_id=478#sthash.6MJf6wZW.dpuf.
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© 2017 Robert Cervero, Erick Guerra, and Stefan Al
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Cervero, R., Guerra, E., Al, S. (2017). Road Contraction. In: Beyond Mobility. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-835-0_8
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