Giving names to nameless streets
By Markus Berensson
Seoul is an impressive city. Every corner of it vibrates with activity in a way that is hard to find in many other places.
The sheer enormity and energy of Seoul is enough to love it, but the way you love a scruffy dog. Seoul is grey, ugly and physically uninviting.
Urban space is dominated by high-rises, freeways and overpasses; hard concrete, mortar and bricks own the public space.
But unlike many other global cities Seoul sits on a vast source of potential revenue that can help the capital get a face-lift and enable further investments in a more human and eco-friendly environment.
Seoul’s streets are not exactly paved with gold, but the thousands of nameless roads and alleys in the city have the ability to turn pavement into profit.
This is something that already has been done in urban centers around the world. In San Diego, Calif., for example, the city administration ― in an effort to bridge a budget gap ― decided to sell street names and names of urban landmarks to individuals and companies.
That gave the city a new source of income, while providing some citizens and businesses with opportunities to leave a monument over themselves, or invest in a novel marketing strategy.
This was not a friction-less process though. Many citizens saw this measure as an unpleasant commercialization of urban space and voiced their complaints. But this was California and not Korea, and there is one reason why this project is unlikely to generate the same discontent in Seoul.
In San Diego the streets were already called something; Seoul is a city where most streets have no names.
Allowing people to buy the ``rights” to a street name in Seoul doesn’t interfere with existing historical artifacts. An urban landmark doesn’t suddenly change into something new.
That way it doesn’t have to irk any citizen that their street becomes something else, just because someone decided that they wanted to have their name on a plate. And since Seoul is not in such dire straits as San Diego found itself in, it can restrict the sales to individuals and avoid a lot of anti-business protests.
Buying a street name can also be a strictly cosmetic measure, where the name will have no administrative meaning. It’s purely a piece of adornment ― a sign on a street corner ― and will not affect city services such as mail delivery, maps and the like.
As for the cost, the buyers will pay for everything that is associated with setting up a sign (manufacturing, administration and assembly) on top of the fee for the right to name the street.
A fee that will vary depending on the size and importance of the road in question. Main arteries that crisscross Seoul and already have a name will not be on the market.
By utilizing this untapped resource the Seoul Metropolitan Government can let Seoulites personalize the city and leave their own special mark. While using the revenue from the sales of street names to set up a fund that will finance development projects with the aim of raising the quality of life for everyone in Seoul.
What kind of projects?
This is for the citizens to decide through a process where people send in suggestions about how to best use the fund in their own neighborhoods, and finally pick winners through popular vote.
Thereby, using free-market principles and democratic initiatives to engage the citizens and improve the public space.
The writer is an exchange student from Uppsala University in Sweden who just spent two semesters at Seoul National University. He’s an economics major and can be reached at markus.berensson@gmail.com.