Songpa to host LivCom Awards next week

By Kim Rahn

Songpa will host an international competition to select local communities focusing on a livable environment and have them share their know-how.

The International Awards for Liveable Communities (LivCom Awards) will be held at the Lotte Hotel World in the southeastern Seoul district from Oct. 27 to 31.

Songpa was the first Korean local community to receive the award in 2009 and it is the first time for the competition, authorized by United Nations Environment Programme, to be held in Korea.

“The event will be an opportunity for local authorities to share environment-friendly policies and benchmark each other’s experience,” Songpa Chief Park Choon-hee said at a press conference in Seoul, Thursday.

In the five-day competition, delegations comprising 450 people from 77 cities in 26 countries will give presentations about their own practices and efforts for environmentally friendly and sustainable communities. They were selected from 338 cities in the preliminaries, and 13 Korean cities were included in the finals.

The awards are given in three sectors: Whole City Awards that assess cities in general, divided into five groups according to the size of population; the Bursary Awards that select cities pursuing the best projects in any category; and the Project Awards to acknowledge the best urban project that contributes to environmental protection.

On the last day, the winners will be announced along with the Songpa Declaration, through which the participants will show their commitment to continuous practices to save the earth.

Coinciding with the awards is the Hanseong Baekje Cultural Festival from Oct. 28 to 30. Held at several places in the district, the festival is to commemorate the early Baekje Kingdom (18 B.C.-A.D. 475) when Songpa was the country’s capital.

“Through the festival, foreign participants of the competition will be able to recognize Songpa as a historic district,” Park said.