Between Blueprints and Bootlegs: Spatial Politics of Modernity in the Sewoon Plaza, Seoul
0
조회
0
다운로드
0
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
This paper examines the Sewoon Plaza in Seoul as a contested urban space shaped by both top-down planning and bottom-up improvisation. Originally conceived in the 1960s as South Korea’s first large-scale mixed-use redevelopment project, the Sewoon embodied the state’s vision of modernity through monumental architecture and centralized planning. However, the space was soon appropriated by grassroots actors like technicians and merchants who transformed it into a hub of repair, reverse engineering, and informal media circulation. Drawing on Lefebvre’s theory of spatial production and post-colonial critiques of development, the study reveals how the plaza became a site where global technologies were localized and modernity was negotiated from the margins. Rather than viewing the Sewoon as a failed urban planning, I reframe it as a living archive of urban experimentation and other modernities. The case of the Sewoon Plaza demonstrates how modern cities are not only planned from above but continually reinvented through everyday practices on the ground.
Abstract
This paper examines the Sewoon Plaza in Seoul as a contested urban space shaped by both top-down planning and bottom-up improvisation. Originally conceived in the 1960s as South Korea’s first large-scale mixed-use redevelopment project, the Sewoon embodied the state’s vision of modernity through monumental architecture and centralized planning. However, the space was soon appropriated by grassroots actors like technicians and merchants who transformed it into a hub of repair, reverse engineering, and informal media circulation. Drawing on Lefebvre’s theory of spatial production and post-colonial critiques of development, the study reveals how the plaza became a site where global technologies were localized and modernity was negotiated from the margins. Rather than viewing the Sewoon as a failed urban planning, I reframe it as a living archive of urban experimentation and other modernities. The case of the Sewoon Plaza demonstrates how modern cities are not only planned from above but continually reinvented through everyday practices on the ground.