[Slate] Revisiting Regional Revitalization Through Stories of US Immigrants

Movie 'Elemental' Tells Story of Saving Fire Town in Crisis
Irony of Restoring Region Missing Its Region... Critique of Uniform Central Government
Change for Sustainable Prosperity... Emphasis on Stakeholder Values

The movie 'Elemental' is a story about immigrants in the United States. You can tell just by looking at the composition of Element City, the setting. The elements?fire, water, air, and earth?each live in their own autonomous districts. There are differences in living conditions and labor environments. The most deprived district is Fire Town, home to the late-arriving fire element. It is a slum on the outskirts of the city. The sewer pipes are old, and there is barely any levee blocking the nearby river. If flooding occurs, most of the residents could perish. The water district, which settled first, is the exact opposite. It is beautiful and pleasant, with skyscrapers and green forests harmoniously coexisting. Although it covers only 12% of the entire territory, it is like a metropolitan area where 52% of the population is concentrated. It makes one realize the structural limitations of capitalism, such as wealth disparity and polarization.

In fact, the biggest issue this movie addresses is racial discrimination. It uses the antagonistic elements as a metaphor for hatred and prejudice. However, the story of saving the endangered Fire Town also raises another concern: change for sustainable prosperity. Director Peter Sohn emphasizes a value summarized as autonomy and decentralization. Autonomy means the motivation or mechanism to recognize and solve problems independently. The more earnest the desire, the higher the likelihood of success.

Amber, the fire element (voiced by Lea Lewis), can be considered a model of change. She wants to inherit her father Bernie’s (voiced by Ronnie del Carmen) modest store. However, due to inflexible upper management reports by Wade (voiced by Mamoudou Athie), a water element investigator, the store faces closure rather than succession. The mismanagement is not Amber’s or Bernie’s fault. It is Element City’s fault for poorly executing the city plan from the start. They neglected the root causes that could lead to flooding for a long time and responded complacently even after recognizing the problem.

Amber sets out with Wade to find the fundamental cause. Although their neighborly relationship is uneasy, their well-matched division of roles fills each other’s gaps. Amber takes the lead. She is full of a sense of ownership, internalized with empathy for the problem and a will to solve it. Naturally, she knows the local issues inside and out. Like a doctor who diagnoses and treats precisely, she finds an effective solution. Wade, representing the central government, contrasts sharply. He did not even try to do anything special or consider alternative approaches. Without understanding the reality, he made significant decisions while babbling. Only after empathizing with Amber’s earnestness did he break away from policy decisions detached from the field.

This series of events is like a reflection on regional revitalization focused too much on appearances. Regional restoration without the region is inevitably hollow and bitter. Unfortunately, Korea has often fallen into such traps. Even when innovative problem-solving methods were found, they were seen as unfamiliar and uncomfortable. There was considerable resistance and pressure from interest groups surrounding change, making it difficult to shift projects to be centered on the stakeholders. It was common to structure projects according to long-established frameworks, allocate budgets, and then collect results. As a result, even though it was regional revitalization, the subject was the central government, and the object was the region.

Urban regeneration was no different. The execution space was mostly local areas. However, even in places hardly called cities, uniform projects under the title of urban regeneration were carried out. In many rural areas, only indirect participation rights are still granted. The path for stakeholders to define and solve problems themselves rarely opens.

Of course, like Amber’s parents, local governments’ policy decision systems can be more bureaucratic and closed than the central government’s. Competitive construction-type projects that proceed without thorough planning are a typical example. It is common that precise demand surveys or even residents’ opinions are not reflected. Therefore, the required attitude is autonomy. It must be equally reflected in a democratic and open project system to emerge as a new subject of regional revitalization. Just as the prepared Amber brings peace to Fire Town...

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