영어게시판

Seoul—a city long synonymous with unchecked urban development, where Parks
were more commonly found in the phone book than on the streets—is growing green.
Besides the restored Cheonggyecheon, which opened last October, the city has h
elped plant some 3.3 million trees since 1998 and recently developed Seoul Forest,
a $224 million patch of urban woodland comparable to London's Hyde Park.
A cutting-edge, clean-running transit system is slowly weaning Seoulites off their auto
addiction. New museums including the Leeum, which houses Samsung's corporate
art collection in a stylish building designed by three different world-class architects,
are feeding the city's growing appetite for culture. And when soccer-crazed Seoulites
gather by the thousands in front of City Hall this summer to cheer South Korea's
performance in the World Cup, as they did in 2002, they'll be celebrating on a neatly
trimmed lawn called Seoul Plaza. "When the Korean economy was just trying to get
back on its feet after the war, having these parks was a luxury," Lee says. "But now
we try to achieve a balance between function and the environment, and whenever we
have to choose, we try to put the environment first."

The greening of Seoul has ramifications that go beyond the mountains that ring the city.
If this concrete jungle can shift into clean, sustainable urban development, then there's
hope that other messy, environmentally challenged Asian cities like Beijing, Bombay
and Jakarta can do the same. The South Korean capital's example could be especially
instructive for its fellow Asian Tiger Hong Kong, where short-sighted political leadership
has allowed the environment to degrade alarmingly (see story, page 21). "Seoul is an
interesting model in terms of a megacity," says Karl Kim, an urban-planning expert at
the University of Hawaii who has traveled back and forth to Korea for the past two
decades. "There are lessons to be learned here about environmental management
and sustainable development. You want to be able to not just do business, but to live
in these cities."
For all the commotion they're causing at Cheonggyecheon on a Saturday afternoon,
the two celebrities might be film stars or footballers. In fact, they're a pair of mallard
ducks, cruising as imperiously down the restored stream as fowl can manage while
being pelted with bread crumbs by children giddy at the sight of actual nature.
Though wildlife has returned to the stream gradually, people have come immediately,
and in large numbers—the city clocked 10 million visitors to Cheonggyecheon within
three months of its opening. Beginning a few hundred meters behind City Hall, the
stream runs in a dugout below street level, giving respite from the traffic and noise.
Office workers on lunch breaks and couples on dates follow the current as it tumbles
over waterfalls, squeezes through stepping-stone crossings and flows beneath 22
different bridges, including two modeled on stone relics from the early Chosun
dynasty. "This is the first time I've come down, and I really like it," says 59-year-old
Chung Sook Tak, standing near the restored Gwanggyo bridge. "The area was so
polluted before. I never thought it would turn out this well."