Six major obstacles to a walkable Seoul

From firsthand experience, these are six broad problems with walkability in Seoul that affect all pedestrians, not only the mobility-challenged:

1. Super-wide streets

2. Driver attitudes

3. High-rise apartment complexes

4. Inconsistent sidewalk quality

5. Poor pedestrian access to important public places

6. Land use segregation

Super-wide streets:

Every city contains wide streets to funnel copious amounts of cross-town traffic away from smaller roads, but Seoul takes this idea to its logical extreme. Arterial roads contain anywhere between four and eight traffic lanes in each direction. Crosswalks are few and far-between, and traffic signal cycles may stretch past five minutes. Some streets further limit path choice to pedestrian overpasses (보도육교) or underground walkways (지하보도).

The sheer dimensions of these streets make it tough for anyone who walks slower than a healthy adult to cross within the limited signal times. Having many lanes available also prompts drivers to treat these streets as expressways and drive faster. For those less agile and less visible to drivers (particularly small children and wheelchair users), wide streets pose a greater threat of collision with a car or scooter.

The lack of crosswalks means longer walking journeys to reach a safe crossing point. Sometimes the only available crossing point is an overpass or underground walkway that involves stairs or other potential injury points. Ascending and descending four flights of stairs in hot, humid summer weather or the cold rain/sleet/snow of winter takes stamina, sure footing, and time.

At best, wide arterial roads severely limit path choice for non-drivers across much of the city, making the average walking trip longer and more physically demanding. At their worst, they pose millions of injury risks to pedestrians, young and old.

How did things get this way?

There's no single explanation for why Seoul contains so many super-wide arterial roads. It's sheer size and population generates huge demand for automobile roads, though this is tempered by the scarcity of parking. Many of these wide roads were established as Korea entered an industrial boom, a time when large, modern infrastructure symbolized progress and a better life. Even the unwieldy pedestrian overpasses and underground walkways were welcomed with civic pride as pragmatic solutions to increasing traffic fatalities on the automobile-dominated streets. The result was a planning culture that treated pedestrians as yet another obstacle in the path of automobile efficiency.

It would not be fair to single out Seoul's planners for having taken this approach. Nearly every other city in the world has gone through a similar period of road expansion at the expense of the pedestrian environment, and many continue to do so. Seoul went through this period of expansion at a time when large swaths of land were being rebuilt from war damage or newly developed to accommodate refugee influx (especially south of the river). I think Koreans are particularly quick to assimilate foreign technology and organizational techniques, often taking such ideas to their logical extreme. Much of modern Seoul was a tabula rasa, primed to adapt the latest planning techniques from Western cities, yet ignorant of the backlash that massive infrastructure projects had already prompted in these cities. It's only recently that awareness has caught up.

It is also unfair to universally proclaim wide arterial roads an absolute evil. When compared with the alternatives (elevated highways, inadequate access to transit-neglected parts of the city) wide roads are a relatively flexible way of handling transportation load. They can later be modified to include rapid transit bus lanes, converted to boulevards with full-featured parks in the middle, narrowed to accommodate wider sidewalks, etc. A hierarchy of road size and use is also desirable in any large city, making it easier to navigate and creating variety in the cityscape.

Jaime Lerner's fantastic talk on Curitiba

Notes from discussion with Professor Seok Jeong (정석)

From a visit to 경원대 on 2/20/08.

1993 - Formation of the NGO 걷고싶은 도시만들기 시민연대 (도시연대 for short), or Citizen's Coalition for Making Walkable Cities (my translation).

January 1997 - Seoul City Council sets an ordinance supporting walkability, prompting other Korean cities to follow. The "tipping point."

1998 - The first master plan to improve walkability in Seoul, backed by Mayor Koh.

One of the initial acts of the NGO was a publicity event involving several politicians in wheelchairs. Their stated goals were to improve the walking environment around school zones and to restore aboveground pedestrian crossings. Members of the coalition included young council members, Seoul Metropolitan Government officials, professional urban designers, and activists.

They had to overcome the inertia of an automobile-dominated culture. City planning up until then prioritized driver's rights, expanding or opening new roads to accommodate demand, and displacing important pedestrian amenities. One particularly damaging traffic law provision allowed for only one kind of pedestrian crossing at any intersection. Thus, in places where underground walkways or pedestrian overpasses were built, crosswalks had to be removed, for the sake of unimpeded car travel. This included major intersections with subway stations that could serve as underground detours.

Early on the coalition recognized that they need to enact hard policy that could survive across changing mayoral administrations. They needed both mayoral action and supporting legislation to implement the 5-year plans. Hence, the city ordinance promoting walkability.

Fixing the streets is quite complicated. Sidewalk standards are set in national and city laws, and local governments are responsible for maintaining their own streets. Larger arterial roads, however, are managed by the city. Because these measures affect public safety, local police departments also have a large say in matters like restoring street-level crosswalks. Finally, transportation law continues to resist design changes. As a result, improvements are locally spotty, and law reform like the Korean analogue to the ADA is applied to transportation law.

The legal system is unique to Korea, and Parliament is the main obstacle to change, though one member is raising these issues. The next big step, then, is to change the legal framework to include the concept of pedestrian-oriented streets (woonerf, rather than car-free).

The other obstacle is the individual mindset, the perception that roads are primarily for the driver instead of the pedestrian. This is the area I would like to further focus on.

Random asides:

• The first 5-year plan included ten broad projects to begin making Seoul more walkable; Mayor Koh adopted most of these, save the residential district improvements.
• The second 5-year plan was made by transportation specialists and reflects a different focus: downtown project demonstrations, connectivity, 무교동길 as a model street...
• 녹색교통 is another NGO promoting similar goals.
• 13,000 car accident deaths in 1993, half were pedestrians; these have dropped 40-50% since.
• Appealing to the safety needs of children was a primary argument for walkability; seniors and disabled people were invoked in certain cases but not universally.
• 일산 is a new town popular among seniors, with plenty of facilities and senior centers for their needs.
• 인사동 is home to many disabled people, and activism for their needs resulted in removing the 안국 pedestrian overpass.
• Korea has passed the 'motoration age,' and rights of drivers are losing importance.

Car-free day in Seoul

Car-free day, or 차없는날, was held last year on September 10. There is a translation of a short news article on the event here. I took the afternoon to walk down the length of Jongno (종로) and witness it firsthand.

Jongno is one of the busiest streets in Korea, with three to four traffic lanes in each direction, hundreds of small stores and restaurants (usually chain establishments), major transit nodes, and a dozen bus routes running along its length. Its width owes to a historical use as a processional for royalty in old Seoul. Along with Euljiro and Cheonggyecheon, it is one of the major east-west connectors in downtown Seoul, and during business hours is invariably hectic with cars, buses, taxis, scooters, and pedestrians elbowing for space. Unfortunately, pedestrians make up the bottom of the pecking order, and are squeezed into narrow sidewalks and forced to wait minutes for crosswalk signals. In some parts of Jongno, the only safe way to cross between the north and south sidewalks is an underground arcade or subway station (these, too, are crammed with merchants).

Such is life on Jongno. Car-free day was a one-day demonstration of what life could be if traffic was limited to buses (and a few brazen scooter riders), and most of the street opened up to pedestrians.

A quick list of what the city changed:

• Used traffic cones and barricades to narrow the street to two center lanes: one bus lane for each direction.
• Set up traffic cops at each intersection to prevent any vehicle that was not a public transit bus from entering the street.
• Added signs and more public servants to guide foot traffic at intersections and provide information.
• Closed parking lots to public institutions to encourage transit use.
• Allowed free use of buses during early morning rush hour.
• Added information kiosks on environmental issues, "green technology" (including a fuel cell bus), bicycle options, city planning, etc.
• Created a grassy (thin layer of turf) area in front of Jongak hosting public performances, mostly elementary school kids in shrill song-and-dance numbers.

So, was it a success? If anything, it demonstrated how accustomed people have become to automobile-centered design. Except for areas where kiosks beckoned curious people to step onto the asphalt roadway, most pedestrians remained on the sidewalk, content to observe. Street vendors also stayed on the sidewalk facing away from the road, maintaining the narrower corridors that people were used to. It didn't help that the street trees were too small to offer much shade beyond the sidewalks. As a result, the view of the street was mostly desolate, with few citizens taking advantage of the extra width of walking area.

One amusing example of this was watching people catch the bus.  Since buses were restricted to the middle lanes of the road, they also had to stop in those lanes to pick up passengers. Despite knowing this, people opted to wait for their buses at the usual spots on the sidewalk, and made a mad dash to the center when their bus arrived. A similar problem occurred at crosswalks; people waited for the walk signal at the sidewalk, instead of stepping in close to the actual vehicle lanes in use.

This illustrates a major oversight by the event planners: the timing of lights and walk signals remained the same, and people had to wait just as long to cross the street, whether across the two bus lanes on Jongno or any of the intersections along its length. The heavy traffic at cross-streets and the fast-moving buses necessitated traffic police at every point, but their presence discouraged people from crossing anywhere other than designated crosswalks, and at any time other than during walk signals. The walking environment felt just as restricted and formal as it did with the car traffic.

What does this imply for a universally accessible Seoul? First, pedestrians are very mindful of remaining within their designated boundaries, their behavior reinforced by physical barriers, plantings, painted lines, traffic behavior, and the presence of authority. There was little sense of "taking back the street", in the way that they took back Cheonggyecheon from exclusively automobile use. It is unlikely that Jongno will ever be car-free on a regular basis, so to improve accessibility and comfort in the long-term, the city will need to explore widening the sidewalks at the expense of car lanes. Car-free day shows that traffic in Seoul still circulates well without Jongno available, so perhaps there is room to reduce its capacity.

Second, it is nice to be able to cross the street aboveground for most of its length, and having ample time to do so. It is much easier to cross two lanes than six, especially if you have trouble moving as quickly as the signals demand, and to avoid the stairs leading in and out of underground walkways.

Lastly, no matter how much space you create for pedestrians, they will not use it if it is uncomfortable or uninteresting. In absence of shade, street commerce, or civic engagement, there was little incentive to leave the sidewalk for hot, open asphalt. Removing the cars from Jongno reveals the fundamental difficulty in creating a comfortable, attractive walking environment in such a wide street.

First thoughts

With the new year comes a new blog. I will be using this space to record ideas, link articles, and keep track of my experiences researching urban design in Seoul. My primary focus is on urban design for elderly and disabled citizens, including the ongoing movement towards a “barrier-free city” (장애물 없는 도시) and the spread of universal design. However, anything urban planning or design-related in Seoul is fair game!

When I tell people that I studied urban planning in college, one of the first questions I usually get is “So, what do you think of Seoul?” The best I can reply in my awkward Korean is that Seoul is a huge, busy city with some nice areas. After living in Seoul for the past few months (and, admittedly, not being especially brave in exploring the city) I think I can elaborate a bit further. These are some first impressions on the urban form of Seoul:

• Seoul is a very, very large city, and the best way to describe its form is “dense sprawl.” The problems faced by housing experts, transportation planners, environmentalists, and designers go well beyond the problems of American cities. People are accustomed to living in multi-unit housing, relying on (and expecting) quality public transportation, and certainly do not take any open space for granted. Unfortunately, even with a vast public transit network and numerous high-capacity roads (8 lanes in both directions, anyone?) congestion remains a perennial problem. Space, rather than distance or sprawl, is a primary constraint here.
• Because of this density, Seoul is a vertical city, with a variety of uses within each building. Mixed-use is the norm, with small commercial use occupying most ground-level and underground spaces, and offices and residences dominating the higher floors. In neighborhoods developed in the mid-20th century, most everyday amenities like grocery shopping and pharmacies are within walking distance from the home. However, high-rise housing developments and large, enclosed shopping centers continue to replace older neighborhoods. Some of these newer buildings contain a variety of uses within (e.g. office space, medical care, restaurants, grocery shopping, hair salons) but are also much less permeable to pedestrians from the outside. Access is instead oriented to automobiles.
• Speaking of which, automobiles continue to dominate the landscape, despite recent efforts to create pedestrian-friendly streets. Major arterial roads are very wide, wait-times for pedestrian walk signals average several minutes, and drivers assume right-of-way in most situations. Crossing the street can be dangerous, particularly if you do not walk at the pace of a healthy adult. An abundance of engineered solutions to pedestrian safety issues (bridges, underground walkways, guardrails along sidewalks, bollards to block car entry to sidewalks, etc.) is gradually giving way to more traditional crosswalks and traffic-calming techniques, which is great news for the mobility-challenged, or really, anyone who enjoys a safe walking environment.
• On a brighter note, car parking is relegated to underground lots or strictly controlled short-term curbside spaces. The premium on above-ground real estate means one rarely has to brave a quarter-mile of parking lot on their way to the store.
• Seoul is hilly! In addition to the numerous mountains that bound and define the edges of the city, the hilly terrain that covers most of the city requires the average citizen to develop a strong set of legs (If the History Channel’s Human Weapon is to be believed, this is what prompted the development of kicking-focused Taekwondo). Housing and college campuses tend to be on the sides of hills, some quite steep, and there seems to be little enthusiasm for the kind of terraforming that flattened most of the original Boston peninsula in the 18th and 19th centuries. This allows for a variety of street configurations, variable architecture, and some spectacular views, but also presents barriers to mobility. Stairs are ubiquitous, and old, steep stairways carry personal significance and charm, but their shortcomings are evident on a blazing-hot day while you’re battling a knee injury.
• As in most non-American cities, street addresses are not arranged in a Cartesian scheme, and houses are often numbered in order of construction rather than spatial order. Navigating to new places requires directions based on visible landmarks, rather than a street map and address. The overall readability of the city is thus very important, and Seoul is both blessed and cursed by form. Narrow and curvy neighborhood streets have a lot of character, making them easier to remember; they also block view of taller regional landmarks and disorient those traveling through. High-rise apartment blocks require names and numbers printed boldly on the side of each building to be remotely navigable. Citizens understand Seoul as a collection of districts, rather than a system of paths and nodes, and their images of the city are quite patchy as a result.

More than anything, Seoul is a city in rapid flux. Entire neighborhoods are disappearing as large residential and commercial developments stake their territory in older parts of the city. A new generation of planners is trying to embrace multiple images of Seoul’s future: business center, design mecca, high-tech capital, transportation hub, green city, tourist attraction, etc. The impulse to specialize and create identities fragments the city and threatens that which makes any city compelling: spontaneous order, connection with the past, local idiosyncrasies, healthy counterculture.