Seoul music: immersive art sheds light of the sustainability of a city

#Art can be a useful way of highlighting and creating a discussion around the issue of #sustainable #cities, which can often get lost in technicalities. An immersive exhibition in London about #Seoul was a good example.

With a population of almost 10 million people Seoul is one Asia’s modern megacities. Like its regional fellow urban centres its growth was engineered by its country government to create what academic Yu-Min Joo calls a globally connected national “node” to host investments resources and privileges.

This brings with it the tensions that can be found in large cities: the contradictions between a traditional past and vibrant technological present, divisions between being part its region or the global economy, and the conflict between a modern lifestyle and environmental sustainability.

An immersive exhibition, which has sadly just ended was a good example of how art, lighting, visuals, sound, and other media can be used to raise these issues with a lay audience, who do not need to access academic journals and websites to investigate what it means to be a vibrant yet sustainable city. This article summarises some of the themes and features some images.

Divided into 12 zones, perhaps to match 12 animals in the Korean Zodiac, the visitor was shown a mix of old and new, mythological and technological, spiritual and conventional. It began with an array of screens displaying individual narratives of some 60 Seoul-ites.

Curator Yeonhak Jeong set out the challenge in his videocast entitled An Unsustainable City. As Seoul was all Koreans gathered, he was worried that this “big city will not be able to sustain due the overload of people and materials”. A cri de coeur that can be doubtless heard in cities from Sydney to Vancouver. But Hyewon Toon, a designer insisted that while the crowd was “challenging”, she had come to the city for the “benefits that come with having so many people around”.

Later on, Collage: Gwanghwa uses vivid images and lights, words, and a spectrum of digital information to capture elements of legends, historic ancient buildings, and landscapes that are the foundations of the city’s heritage.  The Urban Pulse and Neon Nostalgia rooms use neon signboards to immerses visitors in the testaments to human innovation and aspirations, whether through food and drink, technology and entertainment, or commerce and education.

One room houses a metallic model of a Soseuldaemun, the large main gate with a high upper roof that was a symbol of upper class homes. A wireframed series of arches is meant to signify a cohabitation with deities central to Korean household culture, and how these deities might manifest themselves in the digital age.

Art is becoming an increasingly effective way to promulgate key messages on climate change and sustainability. At the end of last year, an installation featuring 17 doors, one for each of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals was opened at the UN’s headquarters in New York. Seventeen artists provided their own “entry point” not the debate.

A year earlier, a similar project to highlight Goals 10 to 17 through public art in Rime included a mural featuring a giant gorilla in a city to consumerism, maximum urbanisation and disrespect for the environment to highlight the need to meet Goal 11 — Sustainable Cities and Communities.

And to bring us full circle, South Korea artist Choi Jeong-hwa has highlighted the need for more responsible and consumption and production through public sculptures comprising consumer goods, balloons, wires, and recycled items. His work 1,000 Doors was a 10-story public installation built with recycled doors to show the reality or urbanisation.

That debate will develop, especially as the Seoul authorities are pursuing a “smart city agenda”, which they describe as “a sustainable city … based on city infrastructure constructed by converging and integrating construction technologies, information and communications technologies, etc. to enhance its competitiveness and liveability”.

London’s Seoul exhibition, which was hosted in the South Korean capital itself before its sojourn in the UK did not seek to provide any answers, whether to Seoul’s sustainable development or other contested issues. Hopefully it inspired visitors to find out more about the history and recent redevelopment of Seoul.

European city leaders want urban policy to be on this year’s ballot papers

Dramatic images of tractors driven up to government buildings by farmers protesting at #European green agriculture policy show rural voices are making themselves heard. #Urban leaders need to make sure they are part of the debate during #elections this year.

Thousands of tractors have brought Berlin’s city centre to a standstill, blocked the A1 motorway between Lille and Paris, and clogged up the streets of Brussels. Farmers are angry at German plans to cut subsidies for diesel in farmyard vehicles, new French regulations and taxes, and Belgian moves to limit emissions of nitrogen, respectively.

Public displays of anger by farmers are nothing new, but they may have an impact in a year when voters go to the polls in June to elect members of the European Parliament. Leaders of the continent’s major cities have realised they need to ensure their concerns are heard, too.

Mayors of cities, presidents of metropolitan areas, and representatives of city associations gathered in Brussels to unveil the so-called Brussels Declaration. Launched on 24 January, the eight-page manifesto calls on all European institutions to adopt an “ambitious and effective European urban policy” to cover the European Council’s next five-year strategic agenda covering 2024 to 2029.

Given that 80% of the EU’s population is projected to be residing in urban areas by 2050, the alliance wants to see a “paradigm shift” towards a greater involvement by cities and local governments in the development of European governance, regulations, programming and funding.

They are clearly fed up with being cut off the decisions making process — or in their technical language, the “subsidiarity principle is inadequate”. They want the needs of cities and urban areas to be taken into account when Brussels and the European Investment Bank allocate funding. Another stand-out demand is for a new dedicated vice-president who would work “horizontally” to streamline the bloc’s city policies.

Sustaining sustainable housing

Whether they see all or any of their demands met will depend as much on the internal political machinations within the Commission as the outcome of the June elections, but new MEPs elected by an urban voters base are certainly more likely to be aware of their constituents’ needs.

The declaration also made clear it wanted a more sustainable urban development agenda and, indeed, their number one policy priority is the promotion of the right to affordable, high quality and sustainable housing. This demand is no surprise: house prices have risen by 47% in the EU between 2010 and 2022. But that average conceals some startling national increases such as in Estonia (+210%), Lithuania (+144%) and Ireland (+84%). Rents have also risen, but at a slower pace — by 18% over the same period — with the sharpest spikes in Estonia (+56%), Hungary (+53%), Lithuania (+49%) and Romania (+47%). 

From a political perspective, one worry is that this could fuel support for far right parties that claim falsely that there is a lack of housing because of the level of immigration. Levels of migration and the shortage of housing played a role in propelling far-right politician Geert Wilders to success in the Dutch general election last year, commentators believe.

The UK also has a longstanding shortage of homes thanks to a failure to deliver a housebuilding programme to match the rises in population levels. This is particularly the case in terms of the construction of social housing.

Despite housing associations (HAs) completing 40,000 homes across the UK in the year to March, and local authorities building 4,000, HAs in England will cut their planned spending on new affordable homes in 2024 in the face of budget pressures.

Britain too has an election this year, which current prime minister Rishi Sunak has indicated will be in the second half of the year. The government has repeatedly missed its targets for new home construction but, rather than pledge to finally meet them, Sunak is reported to be planning to give UK families higher priority for the little social housing that is available.

Even ignoring the xenophobia inherent in the slogan, this would repeat a pattern of failing to address the lack of supply but instead encouraging demand by making it easier for less well-off people. For example, the Help to Buy incentive enabled people in England to buy new homes with deposits of just 5% and a government loan on very favourable terms. However as a House of Lords committee found, this simply pushed up prices further out of reach.

Housing is just one part of sustainable urban development policy, but it is almost a litmus test for how serious politicians are about pursuing that agenda. One can build cycle paths and invest in smart city technology, but if people struggle to be able to buy or rent decent homes, that becomes somewhat irrelevant. So far, the poorly housed have not taken to the streets, but perhaps the actions of Europe’s farmers will inspire them to take copycat actions.

Investment in urban resilience is vital to ensure cities can survive and thrive

Confirmation by the Copernicus Programme, the European earth observation agency, that 2023 was the hottest year on record and that this year could be hotter still will be bad news for #cities. Their leaders will need to look beyond #adaptation and focus on finding finance for #resilience.

The continual rise in average temperatures has brought with it more weather-related events such as heatwaves, droughts, excess rainfall and flooding. For instance, London was hit by flash floods in 2021 that damaged homes and businesses, and the following year saw temperatures hit 40°C that contributed to the 387 heat-related deaths recorded that year.

Copernicus also warned that global temperatures were on track to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels — the level that signatories to the 2015 Paris Agreement set as the threshold for containing climate change. Thanks to their fixed locations are being home to so many people, urban areas are also among the most vulnerable places in the world and will likely bear the brunt of climate change. Given that 2023 was 1.48°C warmer than the 1850-1900 pre-industrial level, city leaders are focusing on how to cope, rather than how to prevent, further rises.

For years we have used the terminology employed by environmental scientists and climate experts, talking about “adaptation” — finding ways to survive better in the new environment — and mitigation, or efforts to reduce or prevent emission of greenhouse gases. But the extremities of the climate emergency mean city leaders are looking beyond adaptation towards the idea of resilience.

Although the two are often used interchangeably, resilience includes adapting and coping with change but also putting in place measures to enable recovery and rebuilding. As the Somerset Wildlife Trust puts it, resilience is the ability to “bounce back”.

Heatwaves, rainfall, floods and rising seas

London was in the spotlight last week after the London Climate Resilience Review, commissioned by the mayor of London Sadiq Khan, said climate hazards were increasing in severity and frequency, and warned that London faced “significant risks including more intense and frequent heatwaves, more intense rainfall, the risk of flash flooding and sea level rise”. A quadruple whammy as Fleet Street newspapers would have put it.

But the problems are widely shared. The UK House of Commons Public Affairs Committee said this week that a total of 5.7 million properties in England were at risk of flooding. It said that although the government had set out an ambition to create a nation more resilient to flooding, it had not defined what this meant. “It has no measure of resilience to measure progress against,” it warned.

And this is certainly not just a UK issue. I came across a 2050 climate index produced by a company called Nestpick, a platform for renters to search mid-to-long term furnished apartments for rent on the internet, in more than 3,000 cities. Its focus is on the risk from rising sea levels and on general climate risk and it highlights a mix of wealthy and developing countries at risk. The higher the ranking, the greater the predicted change in climate between now and 2050. The most at-risk is Bangkok, but its highest-ranking 10 also include Melbourne, Amsterdam and Cardiff as well as Seoul and Ho Chi Minh City.

But it is not only coastal cities that are risk. Riverside cities such as Paris, Toronto and London get high rankings while tenth place is taken by Marrakesh, which is 100km inland, because of its rising exposure to general climate risk.

The risk for leaders of both cities and their hoist countries is that those urban environments will become increasingly uninhabitable and threaten the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people whether because of floods, heated-related illness or drought-induced famines.

The C40 Cities group of mayors points out that urban areas deal with “water-related challenges” such as floods, droughts, and water scarcity on a daily basis. The pain falls heaviest on cities in low and middle-income countries, which are 10 times more likely to be affected by flooding or drought than those in high-income countries.

It has been estimated that climate-related flooding and drought is expected to cost the world’s major cities $194 billion a year. However, to avert that bill will require upfront investment on a similar scale. The recent COP28 climate summit shows how hard it is to get governments to pledge money, even when the potential gains are obvious. Nevertheless, city leaders must continue to demand the finance needed to ensure real resilience that will enable cities to both survive and thrive.