The Cheonggyecheon, Once a Highway, Now a Haven

Andrew C. Revkin, The New York Times 16 Jul 09;

Cities from San Antonio to Singapore have been resuscitating rivers and turning storm drains into streams.

SEOUL, South Korea — 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 kings of the Choson Dynasty selected their 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.

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.
Since its opening in 2005, hundreds of thousands of people have visited Cheonggyecheon with friends and family. (Photo by Jean Chung for The New York Times)
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.

In Yonkers, a long-stalled revival effort for the city’s ailing downtown core that could break ground this fall includes a plan to re-expose 1,900 feet of the Saw Mill River, which currently runs through a giant flume that was laid beneath city streets in the 1920s.

Cities from San Antonio to Singapore have been resuscitating rivers and turning storm drains into streams. In Los Angeles, residents’ groups and some elected officials are looking anew at buried or concrete-lined creeks as assets instead of inconveniences, inspired partly by Seoul’s example.

By building new green corridors around the exposed waters, cities hope to attract affluent and educated workers and residents who appreciate the feel of a natural environment in an urban setting.

Environmentalists point out other benefits. Open watercourses handle flooding rains better than buried sewers do, a big consideration as global warming leads to heavier downpours. The streams also tend to cool areas overheated by sun-baked asphalt and to nourish greenery that lures wildlife as well as pedestrians.

Some critics have derided Seoul’s remade stream as a costly simulacrum, given that nearly all of the water flowing between its banks on a typical day is pumped there artificially from the Han River through seven miles of pipe.

But four years after the stream was uncovered, city officials say, the environmental benefits can now be quantified. Data show that the ecosystem along the Cheonggyecheon (pronounced chung-gye-chun) has been greatly enriched, with the number of fish species increasing to 25 from 4. Bird species have multiplied to 36 from 6, and insect species to 192 from 15.

The recovery project, which removed three miles of elevated highway as well, also substantially cut air pollution from cars along the corridor and reduced air temperatures. Small-particle air pollution dropped to 48 micrograms per cubic meter from 74 along the corridor, and summer temperatures are now often five degrees cooler than those of nearby areas, according to data cited by city officials.

And even with the loss of some vehicle lanes in this city of 10 million people, traffic speeds have picked up because of related transportation changes like expanded bus service, restrictions on cars and higher parking fees.

“We’ve basically gone from a car-oriented city to a human-oriented city,” said Lee In-keun, Seoul’s assistant mayor for infrastructure, who has been invited to places as distant as Los Angeles to describe the project to other urban planners.

Some 90,000 pedestrians visit the stream banks on an average day.

What is more, a new analysis by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, found that replacing a highway in Seoul with a walkable greenway caused nearby homes to sell at a premium after years of going for bargain prices by comparison with outlying properties.

Efforts to recover urban waterways are nonetheless fraught with challenges, like convincing local business owners wedded to existing streetscapes that economic benefits can come from a green makeover.

Yet today the visitors to the Cheonggyecheon’s banks include merchants from some of the thousands of nearby shops who were among the project’s biggest opponents early on.

On a recent evening, picnickers along the waterway included Yeon Yeong-san, 63, who runs a sporting apparel shop with his wife, Lee Geum-hwa, 56, in the adjacent Pyeonghwa Market.

Mr. Yeon said his family moved to downtown Seoul in the late 1940s, and he has been running the business for four decades. He said parking was now harder for his customers. But “because of less traffic, we have better air and nature,” he said.

He and his wife walk along the stream every day, he added. “We did not think about exercising here when the stream was buried underground.”

The project has yielded political dividends for Lee Myung-bak, a former leader of construction companies at the giant Hyundai Corporation. He was elected Seoul’s mayor in 2002 largely around his push to remove old roads — some of which he had helped build — and to revive the stream. Today he is South Korea’s president.

Even strong critics of the president tend to laud his approach to the Cheonggyecheon revival, which involved hundreds of meetings with businesses and residents over two years.

A recent newspaper column that criticized the president over a botched police raid on squatters ended with the words “Please come back, Cheonggyecheon Lee Myung-bak!” — a reference to the nickname he earned during the campaign to revive the stream.

The role of Seoul’s environmental renewal in Mr. Lee’s political ascent is not lost on Mayor Philip A. Amicone of Yonkers, a city of 200,000 where entrenched poverty had slowed a revival project. Once the river restoration was added to the plan, he said, he found new support for redevelopment.

Yonkers has gained $34 million from New York State and enthusiastic support from environmental groups for the river restoration, which is part of a proposed $1.5 billion development that includes a minor-league ballpark. The river portion is expected to cost $42 million over all.

A longtime supporter was Gov. George E. Pataki, who helped line up some of the state money in his last year in office, Mayor Amicone said. “Every time he’d visit, he’d say, ‘You’ve got to open up that river,’ ” he added.

Part of the plan would expose an arc of the river and line it with paths and restaurant patios that would wrap around a shopping complex and the ballpark. Another open stretch would become a “wetland park” on what is now a parking lot.

Mr. Amicone, who has a background as a civil engineer, said the example of Seoul’s success had helped build support in Yonkers. In an interview, he recalled the enthusiasm with which Mr. Lee, then Seoul’s mayor, toured Yonkers in 2006 and discussed the cities’ parallel river projects with him.

“Whether it’s a city of millions or 200,000, the concept is identical,” Mr. Amicone said. “These are no longer sewers, but aesthetically pleasing assets that enhance development.”

URBAN RENEWAL IN SOUTH KOREA: From grey concrete to green banks
Goh Sui Noi, Straits Times 22 Jul 09;

WHENEVER civil servant Lee Ji Young, 32, and her friends meet for dinner downtown, they would make for the nearby Cheong Gye Stream after they have eaten.

It is soothing to walk along the river or sit amid the greenery there. When darkness falls and the lights come on, the combination of the natural landscape and the city lights is a delight. Most of all, the cool breezes are a relief during the summer months. Indeed, in the part of Seoul's downtown through which the restored stream runs, the temperature has dropped by 2 to 3 deg C.

It is hard to imagine - even for Seoulites who live or work in the area - that only six years ago, much of the stream was 5.8km of tarmac with an elevated highway over it.

On July 1, 2003, then Seoul mayor and now South Korean President Lee Myung Bak presided over a ceremony that kicked off the audacious project to tear down the elevated expressway and dig up the eight-lane street below to uncover the stream that had lain buried for more than 30 years. Mr Lee had promised in his mayoral campaign to restore the Cheong Gye Cheon ('cheon' is Korean for 'stream'), and he was fulfilling his pledge.

The US$386 million (S$560 million) project was not without controversy. Where was the traffic borne by the two-tier thoroughfares to go? What would the 200,000 merchants whose warren of 60,000 shops flanked the project do for a living while work was going on? Was it worth it to spend so much money and cause so much upheaval just to recover an old stream?

Merchants took to the streets to protest against the project. The city's government held numerous public hearings - and conducted 4,000 interviews with merchants - to explain the project to people and hear their views.

The elevated expressway and the road below it had become unsafe due to the obsolescence of the supporting structures underground, which were being corroded by gases emitted by sewage, the city officials said. Tearing down the expressway and restoring the stream was in the circumstances the best option.

Uncovering the stream, around which ancient Seoul was built, would also restore an important part of the city's 600-year history. There were plans to restore cultural relics such as the Gwanggyo, a bridge built in 1410 that lay buried under the road. The project was aimed at revitalising a part of Seoul's downtown around the buried stream that had become depressed, the city government explained.

Some of the public's ideas were incorporated in the project - including a so-called 'wall of proposal' on which couples can inscribe their pledges of love. The private sector was also involved, with private companies building some of the 22 bridges that now span the stream.

Merchants whose businesses were affected by the project did not receive outright compensation but were given low-interest loans. The city government built a special business section in another district for those who wanted to leave the Cheong Gye Cheon area.

New roads were built elsewhere to compensate for the torn-down highway. Motorists were encouraged to use public transport and the capacity of the mass rapid transit system was increased. Car owners were urged to leave their cars at home on one out of five working days.

The project was completed in October 2005. The restored stream was a far cry from the putrid open sewer that it had become in the 1950s. It could again live up to its name - 'clear valley stream'.

Seoul was founded in 1394 as the capital of the Joseon Dynasty. The Cheong Gye Cheon, fed by tributaries flowing down from the surrounding mountains, was a place where women did their laundry, a playground for children - and also the city's sewerage system. Its bridges became venues for folk festivities, including the lantern festival. Korean rulers dredged the stream from time to time through the centuries to alleviate the problem of flooding. They widened it and altered its course into a straight one. The Cheong Gye Cheon had been central to life in the old city for centuries.

But in the middle of the last century, its banks became a place where the poor congregated. The stream itself became a threat to the health of the people living along it, bringing disease into homes whenever it overflowed its banks. Covering it up was actually an expeditious way to resolve a health hazard.

Today, the Cheong Gye Cheon is a green artery running through downtown Seoul. Its waters are clear, the fish have returned and the birds feed and nest among its reeds. The stream has become the symbol of Seoul's transformation from a polluted metropolis into an eco-friendly city - an ongoing project with its roots in a 1995 policy plan called Green Vision 21.

Mr Lee's stream recovery project was not popular when it began. But its success helped him win hearts and minds - enough for him to go on to win the presidential election of 2007. Now he has embarked on an even more ambitious plan: Setting South Korea on a new growth path based on ecological sustainability.

It all began with the uncovering of the stream that ran through the heart of old Seoul.