한국의 도시지식체계의 형성과정과 연구기관의 발전방향

Abstract

The construction of urban knowledge is related to urbanization and industrialization in the nineteenth century. The concentration of workers into industrial centers brought about urban sanitary problems, leading to the accumulation of the knowledge about built environments, that is, "the city". The situation in Korea is not an exception. Discourses on the city began in the public health sector in the 1950s, but they did not develop into a stable knowledge system until the 1970s, mainly because the rate of knowledge accumulation could not respond to rapid urbanization. Faced with urban developments, the government needs a knowledge system for the direct control of populations, or the administration. It is true of national statistics which was absolutely crucial for the formation of nation-state of Korea. But its effects on the urban problem remained still limited. This situation characterizes the urban knowledge in South Korea. It is in the administrative field and particularly in local governments from the 1970s that the urban knowledge have flourished. Local governments organized the networks of public officials and initiated extensive field studies through the monthly journal of "urban problems" from 1966. The professors and officials configure the formation of urban discourse on various issues. We focus here on the reason why the discourse has built up upon the administration. While in Europe urbanization was associated with the mixed problems of industrialization and heterogeneous populations, the government of South Korea had to utilize the policing power to monitor urban neighborhoods destabilized during the war. The main problem of the central government was to re-register people against frequent territorial upheaval and population mobility. In this context, the government organized the system of national identity through the reconstruction of population control. Mobilizing urban knowledge, such as public health etc., was considered important in governing urban areas, but not a prerequisite. Following the establishment of local democracy in 1987, municipal development institutions started to provide municipality programs, including economic development strategies in the 1990s. It is obvious that these institutions are mainly related to the election of mayor and local council. Researchers in administration, urban planning and economics have produced reports for politicians and local officials. We can thus say of the "governmentalisation" of local studies. In particular, Seoul served as the barometer to indicate such institutionalization of urban knowledge. According to the model of Seoul, local communities organize local studies with the local university, often creating the center of local studies. Most centers purport to consolidate their local identity, but have difficulties in defining it because of the lack of material basis for the accumulation of local knowledges. Insofar as the knowledges is closely related to the Power, we must define the motivation to accumulate the urban knowledges and concretize this process.