Gwangju City Holds 'Urban and Architecture Declaration Ceremony'

Mayor Lee Yong-seop: "Newly Emerging Cities and Architecture Will Offer a Prosperous Future"

Gwangju Mayor Lee Yong-seop is taking a commemorative photo with guests at the Gwangju Urban and Architectural Declaration Ceremony held in the Citizens' Hall of City Hall on the afternoon of the 30th. Photo by Gwangju Metropolitan City

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Seon-gang] Gwangju Metropolitan City announced on the 30th that it held the ‘Gwangju Urban and Architectural Declaration Proclamation Ceremony’ at the City Hall Citizen Hall with citizens and others in attendance.

The ‘Gwangju Urban and Architectural Declaration’ was prepared to reflect on the uniform landscapes, car-centric streets, environmental damage and pollution, disconnection among neighbors, and dull architectural methods caused by rapid urban growth in the past, and to regenerate the city into one where quality of life is prioritized and people are the owners.

To this end, since July last year, Gwangju City drafted the declaration based on the opinions of Chief Architect Ham In-seon and 24 public architects over the course of about a year, and then finalized it through expert consultations, citizen and declaration drafting committee reviews, and advice from the Architectural Policy Committee.

The ‘Gwangju Urban and Architectural Declaration’ consists of one preamble and ten articles that reflect the Gwangju spirit, which respects Gwangju’s history and nature and prioritizes human values in urban and architectural aspects.

The preamble presents the necessity of a new value system for urban and architectural development and expresses the expectation that the newly emerging urban and architectural landscape of Gwangju will bring leisure and vitality to future life, offering abundance to all.

The ten articles cover detailed values and commitments to be pursued in areas such as ▲history and future ▲safety and coexistence ▲villages and communities ▲transportation and roads ▲landscape and views ▲green spaces and parks ▲houses and architecture ▲public facilities and public architecture ▲multi-family housing and residential infrastructure ▲publicness and urban administration.

Specifically, the declaration sets practical goals including respecting Gwangju’s historicity and identity, preserving natural scenery, pursuing pedestrian-friendly green transportation, ensuring parks are accessible everywhere, creating a city considerate of socially vulnerable groups, fostering a city where people want to settle, promoting participatory and communicative public architecture, establishing an open urban structure, providing residential spaces considerate of neighbors, and ensuring publicness and procedural justice.

Gwangju City plans to develop an ‘Urban and Architectural Declaration Implementation Guideline’ to systematize the declaration so that it is reflected in various statutory and non-statutory plans and related policies.

Additionally, related to this declaration, an exhibition of nine leading project proposals will be held at the City Hall Citizen Hall until the 13th of next month.

The exhibition will showcase proposals including the ‘Gwangju Representative Library,’ which attracted global attention last year, and the ‘2040 Future Vision of Gwangju.’

Chief Architect Ham In-seon stated, “Unlike the urban planning charters or architectural declarations of Seoul and Busan, the Gwangju Urban and Architectural Declaration is a value system integrating urban and architecture, and it is distinctive in that it guarantees execution power with concrete implementation plans, tasks, and roadmaps.”

Mayor Lee Yong-seop said, “The ‘Urban and Architectural Declaration’ is the beginning of history and a promise to all to hand down a peaceful and diverse, comfortable city, and a healthy and happy city to the next generation. The newly emerging urban and architectural landscape of Gwangju will create leisure and vitality in life, pursue high cultural and artistic values befitting an Asian cultural hub city, and lead to a new economy and environmental ecology, offering a prosperous future to all.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.