Community Garden in Bundang, Korea
The sign reads: No gardening. The land is owned by Korea Land Corporation and will soon be sold and developed, therefore any cultivation is forbidden. No compensation shall be made for any damages to illegally cultivated goods. May 2005. - Korea Land Corporation

It is said that what is everybody’s is nobody’s. When something lacks ownership it tends to be abused or neglected.

This long Chuseok weekend, I finally had a little extra time to explore my neighborhood. I live in Bundang, which is one of 5 planned satellite cities (link in Korean) created to house the ever-growing population who work in Seoul. It is one of the better ones with a lot of (interesting) open space running through the rows and rows of mind-numbingly boring monolithic slab apartment blocks. I live in its far corner which ain’t all that bad, at the foot of some nearby hills with hiking paths.

On my walk, I noticed a empty plot of land, where people were growing vegetables, in the adjacent lot next to where my 3 block apartment complex stands. There are signs scattered across the plot which forbid any cultivation. I passed by without thinking too much, but this plot of land lingered in my mind long enough to form a series of questions what bubbled up to consciousness:

1. Why was it empty?

In a place like Bundang, where land is so precious, and high-valued, there must be a good reason why it is empty. According to records, it been zoned for residential development and is owned by the Korea Land Corporation, which is the government organization that developed Bundang. Signs on the land state that it will be developed soon, but it’s dated 2005. I’m not sure why it’s being left intentionally empty.

2. What was happening in this empty plot?

It was being cultivated as a community garden. Elderly residents of the nearby apartment blocks have taken over the land, and have planted all sorts of vegetables used in common Korean cuisine.

3. Why was this happening?

What is interesting here is that a vacuum is being filled not with abuse (e.g. communal trash heap) but with productivity (communal vegetable garden). Koreans, especially elderly ones, have a very strong attachment to the earth. My dad has it. He’s always been fostering a romantic dream of retiring to a house on a small plot of land where he can grow his own vegetables. I have never seen him grow anything in my years as his son.

4. What does it have to do with sustainability?

There are 3 components to sustainable communities in the broadest sense: Economic, Environmental and Social. The environmental is the middle sibling that gets all the media attention, but it cannot exist without its two companions.

In my mind, the example of elderly Koreans appropriating empty land for vegetable growing is on a small scale and example of sustainability in practice. It’s obviously environmentally sustainable. It’s also economically sustainable. Elderly people live on meager stipends, with a fixed income, so these people growing their own vegetables close to home make economic sense. But what is equally important is the social sustainability. No sustainable practice can be truly be sustainable without a strong social component: Growing their own vegetables give elderly people a sense of purpose and self-esteem. They are less apt to nag their kids because they have something to do, and it gives them a good reason to invite friend and family over to enjoy the food, or to invite themselves over, to bring over homegrown vegetable to their no-time-for-real-food kids who are too busy scraping a living together. It also provides a generational bridge for grandchildren to work alongside grandparent, not to mention all the knowledge sharing that occurs between gardeners.

In short, the 3 components together create a loop that enriches lives of all residents. A sustainable community.

I’m wondering why more housing developments don’t just create communal vegetable plots with their communal land, which most often suffers from bad landscaping or in worst cases, just cemented over to lower maintenance. Each resident could be assigned a plot of land in the communal garden. If they don’t care for gardening they can lease their land for a fee or freely to those who do care. It’s like guaranteed parking space.

I never cared much for growing things myself, but I can see why people do. I must be getting old.

—

Community gardening has been formalized in the US and UK, but from my shallow internet search (Naver, Google), there doesn’t seem to be any formalized grassroots (nice pun!) organizations in Korea as yet.

—

[update 2008-09-18] Found an entry on Urban Agriculture on Wikipedia (my italics):

Urban farming is generally practiced for income-earning or food-producing activities though in some communities the main impetus is recreation and relaxation. Urban agriculture contributes to food security and food safety in two ways: first, it increases the amount of food available to people living in cities, and, second, it allows fresh vegetables and fruits and meat products to be made available to urban consumers. A common and efficient form of urban agriculture is the biointensive method. Because urban agriculture promotes energy-saving local food production, urban and peri-urban agriculture are generally seen as sustainable practices.

Given that soon 50% of the world’s population will be living in cities, and many of the new residents would have migrated from agriculture, it would seem to make sense for rapidly growing cities to reserve land around the city for agriculture. This would also form a natural buffer to resist urban sprawl and promote density in urban areas.

To feed a city with a population of 10 Million (Seoul, New York etc), you need to import 6000 tonnes of food each day.

I take the Seoul Metropolitan Subway system to work everyday, compacted like sardines in a can. I was in no rush to get to work the other day and as I took my time through the system, I started to notice the signage around me. I found some interesting ones.

(My personal favorite) In case you find yourself in the possession of a shopping cart in the middle of the subway system, we won’t ask you how you managed to get it down the steps and through the turnstile, but you absolutely cannot take it with you on the moving walkway.		You probably won’t know what floor you are on since it doesn’t really matter underground and we don’t tell you, but the restrooms, should you find yourself in need of one, are located somewhere between B4 and B3.
Just follow the blue line into the wall to transfer to the Blue Line.		Make sure you fully decipher the meaning of these random signs before you get on the escalator. And btw, falling down the escalator is not permitted.
Please make sure your feet are in a good mood before attempting to negotiate these steps.		This is where you call to “S.ave O.ur S.ubway”
These seats are reserved for the people who did not listen and fell down the escalator, or have back issues, or (we understand it happens sometimes) just had too much kimchi and rice for dinner.		However these seat are reserved for those in wheelchairs, should they want to get out of their wheelchair and want to sit on these really comfy seats, or those who can magically balance a cane without any hands, or are hiding something under their dress, or are being attacked by tiny aliens.

Commuting as an experience.

It’s about a 10 minute walk from the subway station to my office. The simplest way is to take the main streets around the outside of the block, populated by office and retail buildings, as indicated by the red line.

The more interesting path

The more interesting way is to take the green line, through the block, into the housing, and the urban fabric. If I hadn’t taken this route, I would not have discovered that there is a bakery at the first turn. You can smell the freshly baked bread as you approach it. It’s a point in the trip that is anchored by smell. I pick up a croissant for breakfast there.

Another reason I prefer this route is because there is less noise. I can hear my iPod better. There is also less people, and feels less like a rat race to get to work. I can take my time.

What’s interesting is that there are quite a few others seem to share my preference and have found this route through the block. So the lesson here may be that optimal is not the necessarily the best for all. There will be others that will seek a more rich, different, or in this case peaceful experience over the simple, optimal but noisy experience.

As for me, I just like the smelling fresh pastry in the morning.

Spells E-Z Ham

As I noted in an earlier post, Korea has no lack of ugly signage, adding to the urban cacophony. This one I found hilarious. It’s a sign for a cosmetics company: “LJH Cosmetics”. They were wise to go with the acronym: I assume that the company was set up by 3 partners, whose last names are: Lee, Jee and Hamm, which are common Korean last names. But when you phonetically read the Korea name for the company it sounds like: ee-zee-ham Cosmetics :-)

Seoul’s eclectic architecture

Now that I have fully embraced my role as the tourist, I intend to have fun.

Let’s start with today. Since everything is new to me (the tourist) and in part because of my architectural education, I actually look at buildings. I read them, measure them and place them in a style. Most building in Seoul doesn’t have much of a vernacular to follow, so on top of the corbusian domino system of columns and slabs, people slap on the style (or more correctly ornamentation) that makes most sense with the image they are trying to project, especially if you are retail store. Over the course of time the ownership retail space change hands and whomever comes in afterwards is forced to deal with the what was there before.

This is the case for this store that sells Simmons beds and furniture. My guess is that the store was originally built to house a store that catered to the wedding business (how else would you explain this architectural style?).

This makes for a strange clash of ornamentation. Now it has a modern floating, translucent glass box growing like an alien entity which is obsessed with battling the baroque armed with simplicity and order.