Towards a Deconcentration of the Metropolitan Region of Seoul

Abstract

Korean planners and politicians are confronted today with the rapid and nearly unmanageable growth of the Seoul Metropolitan Area. Seoul's population trippled within the last twenty years in the course of Korea's "successful" industrialization-regarded by some as the world's third economic miracle-and owing to the concentration of the country's most important economic and social activities. Today Seoul is one of the world's fifteen largest cities and offers all the modern facilities required and sought by national and multi-national corporations. Agglomeration disadvantages on the other hand, defined as the social costs of the urban concentration process resulting from rapid growth and unbalanced industrialization and in turn leading to social disparities and imbalances in the spatial development in urban areas, pose serious and ever increasing problems, s'o that the question arises as to whether Seoul can be "tamed" through guided development aimed at reaping the advantages of spatial concentration while at the same time reducing the disadvantages accompanying these agglomeration effects. This paper discusses this question in three chapters: -The first chapter sketches some of the essential development features of Seoul. It is followed by the analysis of some social disadvantages in terms of living and working conditions in. Korea (1). Against this background, current national decentralization programmes and strategies in the Republic of Korea are assessed. Development features and shortcomings of present decentralization strategies form the basis for a study of the possibilities of adapting a relief pole strategy to the Seoul Metropolian Area.