Waste and Urban Regeneration: An Urban Ecology of Seoul’s Nanjido Post-Landfill Park

Waste and Urban Regeneration examines the Nanjido region of Seoul and its transformation from Nanjido Landfill to the World Cup Park, and its relation to the urban ecology within the context of the city’s urban development during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

The study analyses the urban ecological meanings of the site’s two distinct forms by consolidating them with the Lefebvrian urban theory and relational ecological theories. This book looks at environmental transformations and their link to South Korea’s political and economic changes; how Seoul City controlled waste populations, the borderline characterisations of the inhabited landfill and its community, the regeneration of the landfill into the post-landfill park and site-specific artworks which explored the conflict between the invisible presence of the landfill’s garbage and its history.

As one of the first accounts of a landfill and landfill-turned-park of South Korea, this study is a must-read for academics and researchers interested in waste management, ecology, landscape theory and history.

Jeong Hye Kim is visiting professor of Seoul National University of Science and Technology with a primary research focus on architectural design and art in urban settings. Her subjects of research interest are the political and socio-economic relationship with urban environment, post-traumatic historical spaces, sense of place[less]ness and ecological equilibrium. Translations include Hal Foster’s The Art-Architecture Complex and Charles Jencks and Nathan Silver’s Adhocism.