Local Strategic Places and Global Spatial Structure (2000.08)

Local Strategic Places and Global Spatial Structure:
Revitalizing Yangpyong, Korea

The 9th International Conference of Planning History
Helsinki Espoo, Finland, August 20-23, 2000

Sung Hong KIM, The University of Seoul

Introduction

The tension between a megalopolis and its satellite towns is one of the distinctive products of the modern transformation of the city. The problem is more critical in cities that suffered from rapid urbanization without total urban planning ideology and policies. Seoul, the capital of Korea with more than ten million people, is a striking example of this phenomenon. The city boundary has continued to expand over the last several decades and approximately one fourth of the total population of Korea lives in the metropolitan area of Seoul today. Many old towns as well as new towns constructed in the late 1980s became “bed towns” or nighttime shelters for workers commuting to and from Seoul. Yangpyong, a small town located 40km away from Seoul, was a river port until the railway took over its transportation role in the 1930s. As the town has evolved into a place of weekend leisure and consumption after the 1980s, the dichotomy between the inner town and the outer area has been apparent. While motels, cafes and restaurants are dispersed along the roads outside the town, the inner town is still dissociated by the river, railway lines, and the roads running through the town.

This paper is about an urban-architectural project in Yangpyong, which is only one of fourteen separate projects conducted by architects, planners, and researchers who were interested in architecture and urbanism. The purpose of these collective projects was to display a wide spectrum of theoretical assumptions and processes by each participant. What follows is a summary of one of the fourteen components of the project. The issue is not confined to Yangpyong per se but rather whether we can build an experimentation model for other towns in Korea in general. The paper is organized into three sections: first, to review the historical background and the pressing urban issues facing the town; second, describe and analyze patterns of urban space using space syntax theory and methods developed at University College London; finally, to propose and discuss strategic places as a field of social encounters. The project was partly supported by the Cultural Foundation of Kyonggi Province and was exhibited in the town center of Yangpyong in January 2000.

Leisurization and Spatial Segmentation

The town’s geographic location and topography have been major factors that define its relation to Seoul. The town is naturally bounded by surrounding mountains and dissected by the Han River, which transverses the Korean peninsula in the east-west direction. Historical records document that the government established a yamen in the north of the town in the 14th century. Throughout the centuries, the town had functioned as a major foothold of water transport: agricultural products produced inland were transported to the capital through the river. The function of the river port was overpowered by railway transportation during the Japanese occupation of the peninsula in the 1930s. The function of the water channel to Seoul was completely crippled by the construction of dams. Furthermore, the construction of a floodwall in the 1980s shifted many lots under embankment and street level, and everyday life of the town became dissociated from the river. After the riverside was designated as a water resources protection zone, almost all urban and architectural development was prohibited within the town. As a result, the river has been a subject of ambivalence to the residents: they feel there is no economic reward from Seoul, whereas the town provides Seoulites with water. However, the anti-development policy was the very factor that saved Yangpyong from large-scale housing development, the fate of other towns surrounding Seoul.

While the inner town remains sluggish, every street outside the town is encroached by motels, cafes, and restaurants primarily for weekenders from Seoul. This roadside environment is characterized by the mixture of vehicular culture and kitsch populism. The roadside architecture opts for the fringe of the town rather than the congested inner area. The primacy of vehicular accessibility and convenience has taken on more importance than spatial proximity. Museums and other cultural facilities also emerged as writers, painters, sculptors, and environmental artists nestled in the suburban area. Yet, the cash flow in the outer town hardly contributes to the local economy but returns to Seoul. Agriculture, fresh vegetables and fruits, is still a major industry, and the town functions merely as a regional distribution center.

The town currently has 19,000 inhabitants and half of them live in the inner town, which measures approximately 1.5 kilometer long in the east-west direction and 1.0 kilometer long in the north-south direction. The inner town is divided into two sections by the creek running from the mountain behind to the Han River. The southern part facing the river forms a long narrow strip of land, where municipal government buildings, an elementary school, shops, markets, and houses are concentrated. The southern section is again dissected into two narrow areas by the artery; the northern part is also divided into the two sections by the railway. As a result, the town appears as a sandwich formation, stacks of several layers of long narrow land. This urban configuration accelerates the flow of vehicular traffic in the east west direction. By contrast, each section is connected to other sections through a few numbers of streets in the north-south direction. The spatial segmentation had not been considered as a problem when everyday life was confined to a compact area. As the town pushed out its limits, however, space pattern became problematic: the shift in population and development of high-rise apartments in the northern section made the town’s life more compartmentalized and fragmented.

Premises of Spatial Analysis

Space syntax, on which this paper builds a theoretical and analytical framework, has several premises. First, space is described in terms of topological properties rather than geometrical regularities. Second, space is described as a relational pattern that can be explored and understood not necessarily with entire visibility. Third, space is analyzed as a pattern of connections to describe how the part is differentiated within the context of the whole. (Hillier, B. and Hanson, J., 1984; Peponis, J. 1989). According to space syntax analysis, we can represent a street pattern as a one-dimensional extension, called an “axial map.” An axial map consists of the fewest and longest straight lines that cover all streets in a given system, taking account of how far one can see and how far one can walk or drive. The word "space," therefore, refers to each of these lines. An axial map offers a global perspective of the street pattern since an axial line extends as long as at least one point is visible and directly accessible.

On the basis of this mapping, space syntax asks how accessible each space is from all other sections of the system and how many paths between other spaces go through it. It reveals the most important relational property: “depth.” Depth exists where it is necessary to pass through a number of intervening spaces in order to reach a space. Shallowness is where the route between spaces is more direct. Where depth is small we may say that the pattern is “integrated” to that space and when depth is large we may say that the pattern is “segregated”. The crucial point of space syntax process is that space can be assigned a value of depth that characterizes its relation to all other spaces in the system. The 10% most integrated axial lines, the “integration core” and the 25% most segregated axial lines, the “segregation core”, are defined to show the underlying structure of an urban area.

River, Railway, Road and Syntactic Core of the Town

The axial representation of Yangpyong reveals two distinct features: first, the integration core is concentrated on the three-way junction in the southeast area of the town and second, it tends to form a deformed grid pattern. Within this grid, shops and markets are located. The segregation core includes the area of new freestanding high-rise apartments. The automobile encourages this dispersal. This supports the findings by previous space syntax research that commercial facilities tend to be shallower and thus they are more generally accessible than more secluded, deeper, quiet residential areas. The internal roads of an apartment complex keep strangers out by making it difficult to get through, while conversely the shopping streets are within convenient reach from other spaces of the town.

What is of particular concern to us is that the spine of the integration core converges on the oldest street in the town, which would have linked the site of official inns in the south to that of the yamen to the north. It is presumed that the shops aligned along this official street and thus the public and commercial space was combined in the same street during the Chosun period (1392-1910). Today, the railway lines and new roads fragment this former official street, thus the function of the street is limited to the inner town. On the other hand, the east-west artery dominates old streets by carrying heavy volumes of traffic. Two different developments of streets can be compared: one is a street that is still characterized by pedestrian movement; the other street shaped by speed of motor vehicles.

One further feature of the axial representation must be noted: the street, which begins from the railway station and ends at the edge of the river, is not included in the integration core. Unlike the average small American and European towns, this town did not develop a social gathering space near the station and freight yards. In fact, this street is one of the under-used streets in the town. On the other hand, the speed of outsiders’ automobiles dominates local pedestrian movement. Yangpyong becomes the town of through, rather than the town of to or from. The town has many entrances but no gate.

The Future of the Town

Of the many developmental plans by the central and municipal government, two stand out as being of particular importance. First, a large-scale railway station will replace the existing station, as the railway system is modernized. The vacant lots in front of the railway station will be filled with residential and commercial buildings. Second, a grid-pattern residential area will be developed in the east. The integration core will remain relatively stable but will include a few more streets, one that currently connects the railway station to the town center, and a new road that will link the railway station to the municipal sports center. The segregation core will shift to the new residential areas in the east. Therefore, the integration-segregation core will change from a south-north polarity to an east-west polarity. An intriguing feature of the future Yangpyong is that the internal spatial layout of the railway station may have a great impact on the overall urban spatial structure. It could function as a new spine and alleviate the north-south segregation.

In Korea, railroads were introduced by the Japanese. They usually cut through town centers and a station and thoroughfare occupy vacant lands distant from the existing center, well suited to efficient transportation. It has been argued that Korean people used to regard the railway as a representation of Japanese exploitation of the country. This conception persisted until the 1960s and it was an obstacle to make the railway station operate as a public space. After the 1980s, automobile users outnumbered railway travelers; therefore the role of the station diminished further.

However, it would be expected that an improved railway system and service would dramatically change the role of the railway station in Yangpyong. The traveling time between the town and Seoul will be cut in half and the intervals between trains shortened. The population will continue to increase: in fact, the population of Yangpyong has recovered since 1995. A statistic shows that about  960,000 people commute into the Seoul area for work every day while 500,000 leave the city every morning for work in outlying areas only to return in the evening. It is improbable that Yangpyong can remain an exception. Under this circumstance, one of the most venerable areas for massive housing development would be the northern section of the town, which is currently protected by zoning laws. The station will be the most important spatial junction of the town depending on urban planning strategy.

From Grand Urban Strategy to Micro Architectural Tactics

Yangpyong is a juxtaposition of vehicular landscape encouraged by the individual who enjoys contact with nature and consumption and the main street animated by local residents. The difference is that the roadside is the place of temporal escape from a megalopolis, whereas the inner town street is still the place of buying and selling and the place of meeting and negotiating. The variety of town derives from this juxtaposition. But if we agree that urban space is an epiphenomenon of social functions, we also need to understand that an extreme spatial disjunction is a symptom of social fragmentation. It is naive to ignore the distinctive qualities of place and community, as it is to ignore the qualities of a global process.

The problem lies in the impossibility of any radical urban transformation in the capitalist cities. As an alterative to a comprehensive program, I make a modest proposal. As described, the inner town is spatially disconnected, thus lacking psychological reassuring qualities of places and linkage. The public buildings do not animate public events and activities because of spatial dispersion and self-contained layout. Yet there is also great potential: the town has a body of people, socially and culturally homogeneous, inhabiting a well-defined territory.

An attempt to make planning for the pedestrian is an integral part of the scheme.  But, this project does not simply advocate the total pedestrianization of the street. Rather it proposes a triangular form of pedestrian network that links the railway station, the town center, the historic ferry point, and the site of the old municipal government office. This public-environmental-commercial network is based on the integration core analyzed by space syntax. Along these axes, seven strategic places were designated to serve public domains. The network separates pedestrian and vehicular traffic into two orders and sorts out certain public functions and decontaminates their relationship to the city. The strategic place is designed as a kind of epicenter having “ripple effect”: it is a field of programmed public activities and congregation; and at the same time of unprogrammed interactions and natural sustainment of mutual awareness.

The proposed strategic place is different from the conception that the urban space is composed of the discontinuous units, such as paths, enclosures, districts, intersections, points of reference suggested by Kevin Lynch. My conception of the city still remains more structural than formal. The city is essentially the site of our encounter with the other and it is for this reason that the city needs be reconstituted as a continuous urban fabric of the public realms.

From that standpoint, the cooperation of local government, residents, and non-government organizations is critical to achieve this proposal. There were seven formal meetings before the final exhibition and forum. The processes and results were published. The municipal government and a local NGO were supportive during the project period and response to the results. The municipal government has recently tried to make the old urban areas more attractive as cultural centers. Although none of the fourteen projects were implemented, it was the first collective effort to observe, theorize and experiment urban-architectural models in Korea and it could be a starting point for further debate on architecture and urbanism.


References
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Lynch, Kevin. (1960). The image of the city. The MIT Press.
Peponis, J. (1989). Space, culture and urban design in late modernism and after. In Ekistics, n334-335, Jan/Apr., Athens, pp93-108.
Seoul Metropolitan Government. (1999). Seoul Konch’uksa. (The History of Architecture in Seoul)
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