[sustran] Seoul's mayor shows his green streak

Eric Britton eric.britton at ecoplan.org
Mon Jul 25 17:01:16 JST 2005


Editor's note: One week to the day after we nominated Seoul's mayor for this
year's prestigious World Technology Award for Environment, this article
appeared today in a series of the International Herald Tribune on the
trials, tribulations, and accomplishments of a selection of "World Mayors -
at http://www.iht.com/indexes/special/mayors/index.html  As you will note if
you have the time to work your way through the series, life in a big city
with a heavy heritage of past "solutions" is complicated and the path to a
better and more sustainable city is anything but a straight line;
compromises and mistakes are part of the game. But so too is action and
whatever it takes to get the job done. Not always pretty mind you, but the
real world out there is chaotic, fuzzy and not about ready to solve its own
problems.  And here you have a dozen examples of people who are at least
trying. 

 

(And by the way have YOU signed up to endorse this terrific sustainable
transportation concept? If not, we are waiting for you - at
http://kyotocities.org <http://kyotocities.org/> , clicking the last menu
item to see notes from your New Mobility Agenda and Kyoto Challenge
colleagues world wide.) 

*****************************************************************

Also in Kyoto Blog at
http://kyoto-compliance.blogspot.com/2005/07/250705-seouls-mayor-shows-his-g
reen.html

 

Seoul's mayor shows his green streak

 

By Choe Sang-Hun International Herald Tribune, Monday, July 25, 2005

 

When monsoon rains pounded Seoul in late June, carp swam up a stream cutting
through skyscrapers and shopping towers in the city center, their scales
glinting in the sun. 

Television crews rushed to film it. "The return of the carp," newspapers
gasped. And Mayor Lee Myung Bak had scored another point for what he calls
his "green revolution." 

Critics deride Lee's ecological projects as public relations stunts carried
out with an eye to winning the South Korean presidency two years from now.
Nonetheless, the greening of Seoul, a city of more than 10 million, is
moving ahead. Since his election as mayor in 2002, Lee has ripped up tarmac
and torn down walls, replacing them with grass and trees. 

Seoul Forest, a $223 million "ecological park," opened in June with a stock
of deer and mandarin ducks.

But by far his most visible project has been a $350 million enterprise to
uncover a six-kilometer, or 3.7-mile, stretch of the Cheonggye stream, which
once ran through the heart of Seoul but disappeared from public memory a
generation ago.

The fact that this was masterminded by Lee, 63, is perhaps the most unusual
thing about it.

Once known as "the Bulldozer," Lee built national fame as the hard-driving
chief executive of Hyundai Construction & Engineering, South Korea's
best-known builder and icon of its breakneck industrialization. It was
Hyundai that, in the 1960s and '70s, helped put a concrete cover over the
Cheonggye stream and built an elevated highway above it. The stream turned
into an underground sewer, although the highway gave the city a badly needed
traffic route.

Upon taking office, and with the same speed and optimism that he once
employed in building dams and factories, highways and railroads, Lee undid
his former company's legacy in Seoul. He demolished the elevated highway - a
crumbling hazard and urban eyesore after decades in service - and cleaned
out the stream. He built 21 artfully designed bridges over the waterway.

When I was in business, South Korea was an underdeveloped country that raced
to become rich, and I was at the forefront of it," the mayor said in an
interview at his City Hall office on a recent sultry afternoon. "As a mayor
in the 21st century, I saw it my responsibility to make Seoul a green city,
to make it a world-class metropolis."

Lee, one of a new generation of brash, energetic mayors in Asia, has pressed
ahead with his mission despite scandals, like the one that landed his
right-hand man, Deputy Mayor Yang Yun Jae, in jail on bribery charges in
May.

"I get jobs done," said Lee, who is quick to smile. "That's why I am
criticized a lot, and praised a lot. I am a CEO mayor. I take risks."

Gritty, blunt and ambitious, Lee is, in a way, a reflection of the modern
history of Seoul, the 600-year-old capital of Korea. A son of a poor farmer,
Lee lived in a shantytown, worked as a garbage collector and was jailed for
student activism before graduating from Korea University in Seoul in 1965.

He joined Hyundai Construction that same year and sped up the ladder,
becoming chief executive at the unheard-of age of 36. Lee led six affiliates
of Hyundai, which grew into the country's largest conglomerate during his
tenure. He switched to politics in 1992, when he was elected as a national
legislator from central Seoul.

Now, as top administrator of a city that is home to more than one-fifth of
the country's population of 48 million, Lee does not shy away from
confronting national leaders. He calls President Roh Moo Hyun's government
"amateurs who don't have the capacity and experience needed to run a
country."

A member of the opposition Grand National Party, Lee earns brickbats for
such comments. Roh's construction minister, Choo Byung Jik, for one, has
denounced the mayor's green projects as "window dressing."

This is nothing new: Lee and the national government have been at odds for
years over how to ease Seoul's urban problems, from soaring housing prices
to traffic jams. 

>From the mountains surrounding the city, Seoul today looks like a gigantic
concrete scab sprawling up hills and gullies under a brown haze of
pollution.

The city has grown in leaps and bounds. It had barely one building standing
at the end of the Korean War in 1953. By 1988, it was able to play host to
the Summer Olympics. But it was also a city built in a hurry. In 1995, an
upscale department store collapsed, killing 501 people.

With 23.5 million people squeezed into Seoul and its satellite communities,
the city is one of the world's most congested metropolises.

Thanks to Lee's efforts to improve public transportation, more Seoul
commuters are leaving cars behind and riding the bus or subway these days.
Still, Roh recently complained that Seoul's congestion was getting worse. He
came up with a radical remedy: packing up the entire national government and
moving it to a rural town south of Seoul. But in October the Constitutional
Court ruled against him.

The president quickly offered an alternative plan that involves relocating
176 administrative agencies, public corporations and institutes out of
Seoul. That plan is also being challenged at the Constitutional Court.

Lee has condemned what he calls Roh's "politically motivated scheme" to
"split the capital and win votes" outside Seoul for his party. (Roh cannot
profit personally from any new votes, as he is bound by law to a single
term.)

Lee's supporters say that his can-do image could carry him to the country's
top post in December 2007. Surveys rate him as the country's most popular
mayor - although not everyone is happy, of course.

"The bus-only lane Mr. Lee introduced has improved traffic for buses, but
slows down taxis," said Yoon Chang Tae, one of the city's 70,000 taxi
drivers. "But I recognize his drive, his effort to change the city."

Kim Jin Ai, head of an urban design firm, Seoul Forum, calls Lee an
"image-player" and "urban decorator" whose projects have less to do with
restoring the city's natural environment and historical heritage than with
quick and photogenic achievements for possible political gain.

"He is in a hurry to show results before his term ends," Kim said.

That much seems true. 

The Web page of Lee's office is crammed with plans for new projects.
Construction will begin next year on a new city hall building and a new
opera house. A new international school is under construction, part of Lee's
campaign to make the city more attractive to foreign investors.

Another project is Seoul Plaza, the formerly concrete circle where a
half-million Koreans shouted for democracy in the 1980s and as many soccer
fans gathered during the 2002 World Cup. Now it is covered with grass. On
weekends, children frolic, bands play and fireworks burst above - as much a
restoration of greenery as a showcase reminder to citizens of what their
mayor is doing for them.

In stressful Seoul, "without realizing it, people become less friendly and
short-tempered," Lee says. "By changing the city's environment, I hope I can
help make citizens more relaxed." 

On a clear day, Seoul's parks, hidden palaces and Buddhist shrines leap up
in vivid green in the shadows of skyscrapers. On weekends, thousands hike up
mountains only an hour's subway ride from the city center, while the center
reverberates with demonstrators of all stripes who call Roh "the enemy of
workers," President George W. Bush an "imperialist," and the North Korean
leader, Kim Jong Il, a "devil" who must be burned, at least in effigy.

Most people hardly seem to realize that they are living only 50 kilometers,
or 30 miles, from the world's most heavily armed border, within rocket and
artillery range of Communist North Korea.

One change that Roh and Lee both embrace is the relocation of U.S. troops
away from their Dragon Hill base, smack in the center of Seoul. When the
move is completed in a few years, it will end a century-old foreign military
presence in Seoul: first by Chinese troops, then by Japanese colonialists
and, later, U.S. soldiers who fought in the Korean War and stayed.

Once a symbol of security, the 265-hectare, or 655-acre, U.S. base has come
to be regarded a source of traffic congestion and a slight to national pride
among young citizens. 

While the Defense Ministry wants to sell the plot to housing developers and
use the proceeds to help finance the U.S. military's relocation, Seoul's Lee
hopes to turn the compound into a leafy ground that rivals Central Park in
New York.

"The city is turning green bit by bit everywhere," says Lee, who has yet to
declare his presidential ambitions but already sounds like a man running for
office. "And citizens appreciate this."

 

Copyright C 2005 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://list.jca.apc.org/manage/private/sustran-discuss/attachments/20050725/664acb7a/attachment-0001.html


More information about the Sustran-discuss mailing list