Polymorphic Urban Landscapes: the case of New Songdo City DRAFT: PLEASE, DO NOT QUOTE OR CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION Lisa Choi M.A.* ©Lisa Choi *University of Oxford, School of Geography & the Environment South Parks Road Oxford, OX1 3QY, United Kingdom
[email protected] Paper presented at the RC21 International Conference on “The Ideal City: between Myth and reality. Representations, policies, contradictions and challenges for toMorrow's urban life” Urbino (Italy) 27-29 August 2015.http://www.rc21.org/en/conferences/urbino2015/ 1 Introduction Though New Songdo City (henceforth Songdo), located 65 kilometres southwest of Seoul in South Korea (Figure 1), has been bestowed with numerous titles – eco-city, smart-city, aerotropolis, city of tomorrow – one title in particular is foundational to this new city. This paper analyzes the evolution of Songdo as an ‘international’ city as it has been envisioned, built and articulated by national and local governments, as well as lived by the city’s residents. By tracing the messy and complex development of Songdo, and its purportedly international qualities, this paper interrogates ‘international-ness’ and the ‘international city’ as both products of, and challenges to world and global city discourses. Additionally, as Robinson (2005) notes, urban studies literature has tended to focus too narrowly on only a few cities, largely overlooking processes of becoming a global city. Consequently, this research is interested in exploring the politics of becoming a world city, using Songdo’s specific material, policy and rhetorical interventions as points of departure. Figure 1: Map of New Songdo City, South Korea Source: Gale International Press Kit (2015) 2 Model Cities and ‘International-ness’ Through the top-down decisions of the South Korean central government, Songdo has been strategically planned to intervene in existing global and world city networks (Kim, 2013).