Day 7

We went to two parks today, which make for good material in terms of green space. The first park we visited was called the Kyung-eui-seon Forrest. This is a park that runs through the city like a very wide pathway, running miles long. It was a urban renewal project that started in 2004. Before, this area had trains running directly beneath it underground, and was a hard urbanscape. It was actually considered to be a bad area of town, until the renewal. After the renewal, the property values surrounding it shot up by 300%. This goes to show that city inhabitants really do value green space. One may compare this type of long narrow green space to the Cheyongechong river, but the key difference between these two is that the Kyung-eui-seon is mostly surrounded by homes and residencies. While walking through the area, I could see that it was used quite a bit. The people who designed this park put in a lot of thought, and I could tell that they liked to look at the big picture of the park. They wanted it to be as appealing to the city residents as possible. They started by having plans to build structures for small business in the park, but the parks users preferred it to stay empty. I think this proves that people see green spaces in an urban area to be a sort of an oasis from the busy city life. The park isn’t so much somewhere where get a bite of food and eat on your lunch break (although many people do this), but its more of a place that you walk your dogs, or take your kids to play. The second and very notable green space we visited was the world cup park. I see this as an extremely innovative work on planning, design, and engineering. They quite literally took a trash pile/overfilled landfill, and made it one of the most beautiful places you can visit. It shows that planners are willing to think completely outside the box. The area is no longer a smelly eyesore for the city, but is a beautiful park with practically a 360-degree view of the city. It draws people in, and is much more sustainable than an open landfill.

Pictured is me in the World cup park, and the second picture is the Kyung-eui-seon park