planted city

Seoul’s trailblazing ’Stream of Consciousness’

From the New York Times:

For half a century, a dark tunnel of crumbling concrete encased more than three miles of a placid stream bisecting this bustling city.

The waterway had been a centerpiece of Seoul since a king of the Choson Dynasty selected the new capital 600 years ago, enticed by the graceful meandering of the stream and its 23 tributaries. But in the industrial era after the Korean War, the stream, by then a rank open sewer, was entombed by pavement and forgotten beneath a lacework of elevated expressways as the city’s population swelled toward 10 million.

Today, after a $384 million recovery project, the stream, called Cheonggyecheon, is liberated from its dank sheath and burbles between reedy banks. Picnickers cool their bare feet in its filtered water, and carp swim in its tranquil pools.

The restoration of the Cheonggyecheon is part of an expanding environmental effort in cities around the world to “daylight” rivers and streams by peeling back pavement that was built to bolster commerce and serve automobile traffic decades ago.

Check out the rest of the article here. The video above is from the documentary series, ‘e²: the economies of being environmentally conscious’ (via Vimeo).

Infographic: ‘The British Cycling Economy’

“Cycling in the UK has undergone a renaissance over the past five years, with an increasing number of people taking to the streets of the UK by bike. Structural, economic, social and health factors have caused a ‘shift in the sand’ in the UK, spurring an expansion in the cycling market with indications that this will be a longer-term trend. This growth in cycling participation has had the knock-on effect of bringing economic and social benefits to the UK. In 2010 the result was a gross cycling contribution to the UK economy of £2.9bn.”

~ Dr Alexander Grous, productivity and innovation specialist at the London School of Economics and lead author of the new report, ‘The British Cycling Economy: Gross Cycling Product’.

(Source: London Cyclist)