[Seoul Museum of History] Grand Tour of Seoul's Urban Planning

A Grand View of Seoul Urban Planning: From the Struggles of 1966 to Seoul in 2026

All great things begin roughly. Here stands the '1966 Seoul Urban Master Plan,' the starting point and first record of Seoul's highest-level urban planning. It was a time without adequate reference materials or reliable precedents. Through today's eyes, its drawings may look rough and its contents woefully inadequate. Yet it represented the intense struggles of the administrators and planners of that era, who worked day and night to build the framework of a city on barren ground. The history of the city's plans and the urban planning shaped by them is not merely a fragment of urban history; it is nothing less than the 'DNA of the city' on which we stand. Of course, the efforts and outcomes of that time responded to the conditions and context of their era, so they will differ greatly from the challenges and solutions the present and future must address.

This exhibition calmly lays out the context of how these audacious first plans became our everyday reality through their underlying mechanisms, and the chronology through which the vast organism called Seoul has grown over the past several decades. “A Grand View of Seoul Urban Planning” begins by retracing that first, tentative starting point, inviting visitors to question themselves and seek a direction for the city of Seoul. In 026, what future Seoul should we dream of?

Related exhibition: Visual echoes of Seoul, Visual traces of Seoul, Looking forward to the past (City Model Video Hall), Seoul AI Foundation, MIT Sensible City Lab
Seoul Institute Expert Discussion, 8/14 (Fri) - Monitoring the Seoul Urban Master Plan: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
Korea Planning Association Symposium, 10/7 (Wed) - How a City Is Made: The Story of Seoul Shaped by Planning