Creating a sewing village in Seoul: towards participatory village-making or post-political urban regeneration?

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines an urban regeneration project in the Changsin-Sungin Area (CSA), Seoul, by drawing on the current debates on post-political urban policy. Adjacent to Dongdaemun Fashion Market (DFM), the K-fashion hub, the CSA is known for the clustered sewing factories embedded in residential housing. In 2014, the CSA was selected as a test-bed for the implementation of the new policy called the Urban Regeneration Programme (URP). This new scheme is publicly funded seeking continuity and civic participation in urban regeneration. The CSA-URP contrasts with previous schemes in Korea, in which private developers, with state support, were the main drivers of massive demolition and reconstruction. In order to promote participation, the city government has created an intermediary for public–private partnership and adopted the public contest for the distribution of resources. Significantly, this new model has shifted its focus of regeneration from housing to public space, from entitlement to participation, and from proprietorship to cultural capital. This has also raised new queries about whether the new model effectively promotes residents’ bottom-up participation or manages consensual atmosphere. By contemplating Seoul’s latest urban regeneration experience, this paper examines whether the CSA-URP offers corrective forces to capital-led and top-down urbanization or it depoliticizes the political. Thereby, the paper aims to contribute to the critical understanding of post-political urbanism.