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Welcome to the Center for Asian Urbanism and Society at Seoul National University.
Affiliated with the SNU Asia Center, our Center views Asia through the lens of the city, and seeks to understand cities within Asia’s political, economic, cultural, social, and historical contexts. Our research focuses in particular on the cities of East Asia.
Having gone through developmentalist urban development and growth-oriented urbanization, East Asian cities today are failing to serve as settled communities or as social spaces of encounter and communication. In particular, urban development driven by speculative desire and an obsession with growth has destroyed place-based communities. Through the commodification, territorialization, and compartmentalization of space for profit, it has also kept the city from becoming a space of free communication and encounter.
The Center analyzes these processes of urbanization along social, cultural, and spatial dimensions, and explores possibilities for new modes of urban life and urban transformation beyond them. Focusing on speculative urbanization, post-Gangnam urbanization, platform urbanism, and urban commons, we study how Korean and East Asian cities are changing, and investigate theories and practical strategies for commons-oriented urban transformation that promotes the sharing of resources, benefits, and space.
We also conduct field-based research across a range of cities and regions. Through exchange and collaboration with scholars at home and abroad and with local communities, we aim to connect our findings to policy and practice.
Building on this work, we ultimately aspire to become a frontier of Asian urban studies, combining scholarly excellence with practical problem-solving capacity. We warmly invite you to join us.