(Urban space) Seoul panorama photographs from Flying City

Flying City defines itself as an "urbanism research group." It has all kinds of interesting projects introduced at its website, and it seems like a bunch of people I would have liked to hang around with during my time in Korea to help making sense of this monster of a city called Seoul - had the group existed at the time. Among the material at their home site is a small collection of panorama photographs depicting the change of Seoul, recording how the low-storey housing areas are changing (being redeveloped) into apartment areas. I have downloaded them a long time ago and resized them for my diskspace and reasonable website viewing. Here are some statistics on the changes in the form of housing in percentages. The rise of apartment living is quite astonishing - 25 years ago 7% lived in apartments but now half of the population. detached semi-detached house apartment house tasedae (단독주택) (아파트) (연립주택) chut'aek 1970 94 1 3 0 1975 92 2 4 0 1980 87 7 3 0 1985 77 13 6 0 1990 65 23 7 2 1995 47 37 8 4 2000 37 48 7 4 Source: 2000 Census (인구주택 총조사) (Just for the reference: in Finland, 43% of houses are in apartments, 40% in detached houses and 14% in semi-detached houses, and there's been very little change in the last 20 years. But the population density in Korea is almost 30 times that of Finland... Source) The original Flying City photographs, sized around 5-7 megas, can be found here. (UPDATE: the Flying City site has been reorganized, and the files have been moved.) (Update, March 20, 2007. The panorama files are available again at Flying City. Click the small photos for the huge originals to open in a new window. Thanks for the tip to Matt at Popular Gusts.) A larger photograph opens in a new window by clicking. Cheongneung ring road • 정릉 내부순환로 In Seongbuk-gu, north of downtown Seoul. Bongcheon-dong • 봉천동 Of the three Bongcheon-dong photographs, this one is the westernmost, close to the Bongcheon subway station on Line 2. Bongcheon-dong redevelopment area • 봉천동 재개발지구This is the view from Gwanak street on the way from Seoul National University to the SNU subway station. The apartmentalization of housing has been rapid especially in Gwanak-gu, where the number of apartment blocks has been small, and much of the population less affluent. All the construction has also has meant drastic changes in the scenery, and seeing this hilltop covered by all these high-rise houses was quite astonishing. The population has accordingly become more middle-class. Note that there are two other pictures from Bongcheon-dong in Gwanak-gu below - there's a lot of change in the urban space to record there. The name of the apartment area under construction on the hilltop is Gwanak Dreamtown. (Visible in the original large picture.) The right edge of this picture is visible in the left edge of the Bongcheon 4-geori redevelopment picture below. Gwanak-no road goes behind the buildings on the right. Bongcheon 4-geori redevelopment area • 봉천동 4거리 재개발지구These are Daewoo Grand World apartments under construction. The left edge of this picture is visible on the right edge of the Bongcheon redevelopment picture above. The place is on the eastern side of Gwanak-no, near Seoul National University subway station on Line 2. Ha-Wangsimni • 하왕십리Ha-Wangsimni is in the north of the river, which has lately been a target of development plans in order to balance the real-estate prices and counter the concentration of wealth to the south of the river. (Note that Gwanak-gu is also south of the river, but it's not included in the concept of Gangnam.) These are Geumho and Daelim (?) apartments between Sangwangsimni and Haengdang subway stations. Siheung-dong • 시흥동 This is in Geumchon-gu in southern Seoul, close to the city of Gwangmyeong. The mountains behind are of the Gwanak-san area, and this is actually quite close to Gwanak-gu and the Nan'gok neighborhood that I had a post about below. To see these panoramas in full size (2.6-3.0 MB, 4500-5400x1400 px), go to the Flying City page and click the small pictures. Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: housing ∙ neighborhood ∙ cities ∙ contemp.history ∙ photography ∙ stratification