Afflicted by a serious problem of inaccessibility and internal mobility, the district of Andavamamba, situated in the city of Antananarivo (Madagascar), was a scenario dominated by extreme road congestion and a very high pollution index. The few sanitation infrastructures, the precarious nature of the housing, which was not equipped for the challenges posed by the continuous flooding, and the absence of drinking water and health facilities in the area additionally favoured the appearance of epidemics such as cholera or the plague. This circumstance, worsened by the severe lack of public resources and the State’s indifference towards the district, led to an extremely serious and growing situation of degradation.

The project for the reconstruction of the Andavamamba district set itself the goal of developing the main avenue leading into the city, building drinking water fountains and refurbishing the district’s central market. The problems that needed resolution were numerous and varied in their typology. Firstly it was necessary to recover several road links (many of them impassable and, in many cases, transformed into open sewers); it was then necessary to put a stop to the widespread insalubrious conditions by eliminating the sediment of solid waste, a source of various illnesses.

The first task was to refurbish the main axis road (RN1) that links the district with the rest of the city and to adapt the urban space to all types of users. This was followed by a whole series of reforms to improve and expand the deficient sanitation and drainage systems. Then came the building of different sanitation facilities, such as for example 5000 public drinking water fountains, lavatories and showers. The final step was the refurbishment of the central Anosibe market.

The integral refurbishment of the sanitation and housing infrastructures in Andavamamba eradicated the cases of cholera in the newly developed area. Rebuilding the main access to the city (4.5 Km long) considerably improved mobility in the entire south-west area of the capital and increased the circulation of goods and persons. Thanks to opening this road and also thanks to reactivating the market (with a 45.000-m2 expansion and over 1.700 sales stalls), the commercial structures have grown and new socioeconomic activities have been implemented, raising the value of land in the district.

This initiative has been possible thanks to the coordination of the various NGOs that operated in the area, reinforcing the associative fabric between the districts, above all through the communal management of the sanitation facilities. The social actions set in motion within the framework of this project, accompanied by an awareness campaign, have served as a test case and will allow the municipality to start up similar municipal projects on its wider territory.

Since the nineteen-eighties, the complex scenario derived from the different wars that have been fought in Iraq has had a clear and direct impact on the country’s society, education and architecture. In spite of widespread violence, assassinations, kidnappings, sackings or electricity restrictions, activity continues at the Faculty of Architecture of Baghdad University, a public, non-denominational institution where Christians, Muslims, Shiites and Sunnis live and work together. While the adverse circumstances have driven into exile many professors who were threatened and in some cases even murdered, the Faculty continues to encourage graduate students to persevere with their training through post-graduate studies, a choice that, furthermore, automatically exempts them from service in the army.

Talks, encounters, interviews with people from the cultural and academic world and other activities all serve to keep up this climate of fellowship and a constructive attitude committed to the self-sufficient recovery of the city. Transformed into a place of peace, the faculty of architecture approaches its activity from a critical point of view, inviting students to intervene in maintaining the urban fabric threatened by the New Baghdad Plan that is currently in the hands of North American construction companies. This manner of working has already produced successes, as for example in the case of the documentation for the Adhamyiah district.

Since 2003, the high point of the escalation of violence and the time that saw a drastic increase in the destruction of the city, each student from the faculty has taken charge of an historical building. In order to avoid risks on the streets (crossfire, explosions, collapses of buildings…) they were advised to work at documental level at times of greatest hostilities. These documentation tasks, especially of the most emblematic buildings (such as the most representative cafés and libraries) have ultimately been crucial if we take into account that a large part of the centre of Baghdad is being devastated.

Organised into different work groups, professors and students fulfil commissions, generally from the administration, for the reconstruction of Baghdad and other areas of Iraq. The professors, who retain their salaries as civil servants, share all the benefits made by these «university working groups» with the students, allowing them to support their families (who depend almost entirely on their income) and to pay for the cost of their degrees. Currently, 70% of students are working in public and private institutions and as consultants, actively participating in the country’s reconstruction.

This resistance by the Faculty of Architecture represents the preservation of a past that forms part of the collective memory and therefore of the vast majority of Iraqis. Transformed into increasingly important actors, the members of the academic world are having a growing impact on the media. Through this knowledge, people closely connected to the university, such as professor Ghada Al Siliq, are making use of their decision-making power to defend a Baghdad that looks after its urbanism and, above all, after its history.

Binde, a township of around fifty families, has become a strategic spot in Ghana’s geography when it comes to healthcare. In the capital, Accra, many people know about the exploits of Manolo Bonet, the Menorca missionary who 35 years ago built a hospital that has now become a true hospital complex and a fundamental aid centre for the inhabitants of Ghana and neighbouring countries such as Burkina Faso and Togo.

2002 was the year when the category of hospital was granted to the centre built by Manolo Bonet, but the real turning point was the inauguration of the operating theatre in the year 2004. Shortly afterwards, the hospital grew from the initial 7 beds to the current 75.

This healthcare facility has managed to save thousands of human lives, has united warring tribes in the north and has promoted the construction, in the immediate vicinity, of a social centre, a bookshop and a sports pitch where sportspeople train in different disciplines. Its next goal is to create a children’s nutrition centre and to achieve good FM radio reception.

The Binde hospital complex is a project in which the people of two lands have participated: Ghana and Menorca, because the initiative would not have been possible without the involvement of different Menorca entities: the Menorca Cooperation Fund; the Island Council; the town halls of Maó and Alayor; «Amics de Binde», a Menorca NGO that has been working for Binde’s township community since 1997; around fifty volunteers and a considerable number of anonymous collaborators, also from Menorca. The project thus exemplifies the solidarity expressed by an entire society from a specific area. Manolo Bonet’s hospital is an unusual example of communal support for a humanitarian initiative in one country by the public institutions and civil society of another.

The Polis Programme is a nationwide initiative that deals with environment-related issues concerning the structuring of the urban system framed within the 6th European Environmental Action Programme (EEAP) 2002-2012. This is a programme with a strong environmental content, committed to the reconstruction and requalification of new urban centralities. The Strategic Plan for this intervention was born as part of a trend towards urban requalification and environmental valuation that in recent years has been increasingly implemented in different cities in Portugal in order to ensure quality of life and optimal environmental conditions. With regard to management, it seeks to give shape to regional and territorial development policies and to concentrate efforts on revitalising the competitiveness of cities, reinforcing their role in the reorganisation of the territory and improving the quality of life of the inhabitants.. The main issues that the plan has to tackle are expansion-driven urban planning, the disorganised growth of suburban areas, the accelerated breakdown of the urbanistic heritage and a variety of problems linked to the increasingly chaotic vehicle traffic.

The challenges facing the city of Cacém are the valuation and improvement of environmental quality through the support of any initiative that involves increasing the green areas, promoting pedestrian zones and effectively regulating the traffic. This is a programme committed to new urban centralities and to a reconstruction and requalification of high environmental value. It ultimately seeks to create a green city that will promote different lifestyles and uses for the urban space.

Some of the most noteworthy advances in the city of Cacém are the restructuring of the road network to provide a global improvement in mobility and accessibility, such as the Viaduto do Lagar; that make better use of the city and the natural spaces, the creation of new centralities, revitalising community life and reducing future costs with regard to sustainability; requalifying the Ribeira das Jardas and the Parque Linear (which together with the Parque Urbano da Bela Vista, form a «continuous green» that visually balances the area and improves habitability); restricting traffic in favour of the pedestrian; new reformulations of all underground infrastructure networks, urban furniture, paving and public lighting. Also fundamental in the development of the plan were a variety of exceptional measures such as, for example, the application of a bold programme of expropriations, refurbishments and rehousing. One of the most significant cases of this Programme for recomposing built-up areas is that of the Popular Kindergarten in a bioclimatic building.

The Fundación de Apoyo al Arte Creador Infantil – Foundation to Support Children’s Creational Art (FUNARTE) is a not-for-profit civil organisation that was founded by the Boanerges Cerrato collective in the year 1989 in Estelí, Nicaragua. Within the framework of the Foundation, a multidisciplinary team of professionals promotes and facilitates participative processes with the goal of providing integral development for children by promoting their creational capacity. The chosen vehicle is muralism, a medium through which one can achieve a new approach to the construction and transformation of a fairer world without violence, without discrimination, where art is recognised as a tool for social transformation and where anyone can feel proud of his or her own history and culture.

Through a participative methodology and using psycho-affective processes, the initiative is a pedagogical proposal that promotes children’s artistic expression and helps them to understand their rights, their history and their culture whilst exercising their citizenship through critical proposals. The project, which also involves the families and the community, seeks to respond to the lack of spaces in which to develop these abilities and to improve the levels of social valuing of children and teenagers, transforming them into the protagonists of change.

At present the Muralism Workshops project, which has been going on uninterruptedly for nineteen years, focuses its attention on the children from the different districts, communities and markets of the city of Estelí and other municipalities in Nicaragua. A total of over seven hundred boys and girls participate weekly, as well as mothers, fathers and community leaders from the different sectors in which the initiative takes place. During this time over a hundred murals have been painted that are not only displayed in public buildings, schools or health centres, but are also demanded by people from other districts as well as by different institutions and organisations. Through their creations, the boys and girls of Estelí have managed to make themselves more highly valued by adults; they have won prizes in painting competitions at municipal and national level, have produced a mobile mural that was shown in the city of New York during the second session in favour of childhood at the UN and, in the year 2004, the Municipal Government declared Estelí the City of Muralism.

Thanks to the repercussion of the public art produced by the children who participate in the project, it can be stated today that Estelí has a greater awareness of the role that art can play and of what its true potentiality can be.

DRAW (Drumchapel Arts Workshop) is a collective of artists and cultural workers that has been working for the past 16 years in Drumchapel, one of the most deprived districts of the city of Glasgow and of the UK as a whole.

Promoting different art-related activities, the initiative actively contributes to the recovery, remodelling and fitting out of the different spaces in order to hand them back to a community that lives in the midst of a scenario of serious unemployment, drugs, school absenteeism and health-related problems.

Through a programme of ongoing training and thanks to a highly flexible timetable that adapts to everyone’s availability, the activities promoted by the DRAW collective encourage the social inclusion of certain sectors of the community.

The project seeks to boost the visual arts and crafts in the district of Drumchapel and its environs through an informal workspace in which the participants can discover and develop their artistic potential. This methodology aims to improve access to education, training, jobs, self-confidence and the transfer of knowledge and the cultural development of the district in general.

Particularly noteworthy among the different projects pursued by DRAW are «Step Up», a project which works with numerous young mothers in the area offering them a variety of workshops on artistic techniques, and «Photographer Project», a photography workshop that documented the five generations of inhabitants of Drumchapel.

These activities and many others like workshops on design, decorating and mosaics staged by DRAW, are valuable examples of activities aimed at boosting social inclusion in a wide-ranging, diverse and
inter-generational community.

WWiMBY! (Welcome into My Back Yard) is a small foundation created in 1999 that until last year worked in Hoogvliet, a young, highly impoverished town situated in the vicinity of Rotterdam. The principal objective of WiMBY! was to intervene on social issues such as individualisation, exclusion of immigrants or the high number of adolescent mothers in ethnic minorities through architecture, urban planning and educational and artistic projects. At the same time, the foundation promoted the preservation of the green spaces, new forms of communal housing and the participation of the inhabitants in the process of urban regeneration. It was ultimately a question of developing and implementing, through an empirical and pragmatic approach, a series of highly specific projects that would help to establish the foundations for the future of this town.

The initiatives promoted through WiMBY! were numerous and highly diverse in typology. The «Hoogvliet Inside Out» project, for exemple, consisted of taking portraits of hundreds of Hoogvliet inhabitants that were then enlarged and posted around the city in order to awaken a feeling of belonging, pride and identity among the citizens. Under the name of «SchoolParasites», three module-shaped classrooms were installed in order to raise awareness among the citizens of the role of education in the regeneration processes of the social fabric. One of the most wide-ranging projects was the park of Vila Heerlijkheid. This space was conceived as a great eco-friendly leisure area, with sports zones and spaces devoted to different events. The project has grown since its inception thanks to private investment. Currently there is even a lake in the park, which integrates different constructions, small islands, etc. Different associations and foundations work in this space on a permanent basis, undertaking projections, setting up parties and festivals. Heerlijkheid is one of the main centres of activity of the town, a green leisure space managed by the Hoogvliet inhabitants themselves.

The refreshing effect that the WiMBY! project has had on Hoogvliet’s social fabric is obvious. The transformation of its previously lifeless, under-utilised suburbs into one of the most animated areas of the Rotterdam region has made it possible for the town to be taken off a «blacklist» that includes some of the most criminality- and poverty-ridden areas in Holland.

By July 2007 its purpose was achieved and its projects were completed; some of them have been transferred to other organisations that wish to continue the work started by WiMBY! In November 2007 its Tramhuis headquarters were closed and it withdrew from Hoogvliet.

The Paul Bardwell contemporary art gallery of Medellin and the Catalan organisation of specialists in cultural management Trànsit Projectes have maintained a relationship of ongoing cooperation since the year 2004. The result of this collaboration is Desearte Paz, a platform dedicated to promoting the creation and dissemination of contemporary art, through which the artists analyse and become involved in the city’s social, academic, institutional and artistic structures that work towards a culture of peace. In this way, the artists become true socio-educational agents who promote the social inclusion of communities with a high risk of exclusion, and provide them with spaces that allow them to embark on a journey of self-knowledge, to liberate their creativity and to boost their identity and projection. In Medellin the project is being developed shoulder to shoulder with 8 primary and secondary schools, the Faculty of Arts of the University of Antioquia, over 15 NGOs that are active in the city and Secretaries’ Offices of the City Hall of Medellin, which enable the project’s true impact on and articulation with the territory.

The «Social Labs», or «socio-artistic laboratories», are participation spaces where artists, students, communities and professionals from the fields of culture and social development produce teaching programmes, artistic production processes and academic seminars revolving around the different social problems. The Social Labs have dealt with, among other issues, physical disabilities, forced displacements, inclusion of young people in the construction of the community, violence against women or human rights in penitentiaries. These socio-artistic labs have served to generate artistic creation processes that have given rise to exhibitions in both Medellin and in other cities in Colombia and the rest of the world (Barcelona, Cork and Washington).

Between the years 2005 and 2008, the project’s activities have facilitated over 80 international trips for artists and professionals from the fields of culture and social development, over 150 conferences to strengthen the processes of students and social organisations, the production of 20 exhibitions with a powerful political and social charge, sixteen documentaries, a book and 22 workshops headed by artists and social organisations. Over 5000 people between school and university students, artists and at-risk communities have participated in the different processes of artistic and educational production that the project generates.

Today Desearte Paz, which started life as a pilot project under the motto of Redesearte Paz (Rewishing you Peace), serves as a model for cultural organisations such as Base 7 of Sao Paulo, Matucana Cien of Santiago de Chile, Funarte of Estelí-Nicaragua and Can Xalant of Mataró. In the future, the project plans to internationally strengthen a network of cultural agents that, through contemporary art, will promote processes, projects and interventions to reinforce the processes of citizens’ participation, raising awareness of and giving access to the cultural capital of people and collectives in situations
of disadvantage.

The Ideodiseño project is the continuation of the investigation called «The design of need», carried out by Juan David Uribe Saavedra. Uribe’s research consisted of compiling and filing images of what was happening in the streets of Medellin, a city with over 2 million inhabitants and an unemployment and informal worker rate of 51.5%. In this scenario, over 4.000 people devote themselves to separating the tons of waste produced in Medellin, to then supply the more than 1.800 collection centres for recycled material spread around
the city.

Based on the data obtained by Juan David Uribe on which classes of materials are dumped and why, Ideodiseño is engaged in community work that produces functional, culturally defined and socially responsible objects. Within the framework of this initiative, design becomes a socialising element and a valuable generator of collective knowledge, always acquired through and for the community. Beyond the products themselves, the goal of the project is to transmit the kind of knowledge in the field of design that will be functionally useful to the community and will meet its everyday needs.

Ideodiseño is based on Serge Latouche’s theory of the 8 Rs. This French economist promotes and explores so-called Degrowth, a political and economic current of thought that is in favour of the regular downscaling of economic production with the purpose of addressing the environmental problems that humanity faces. Its principles are: Revaluing the values; Recontextualising the ways we understand reality, raising awareness of the social constructs of poverty; Restructuring the economy and introducing changes in the forms of production; Relocating production and consumption on a local scale;

Redistributing access to natural resources and to richness; Reducing consumption to a level that the biosphere can withstand; Reusing consumer goods and committing to the production of durable articles and to repairing and conserving them, and Recycling in all activities.

In the year 1999 fifty people headed by Sergio Fajardo organised themselves under the motto of Citizens’ Commitment and created an independent civic movement in order to actively participate in the politics of the city of Medellin. The group finally won the city hall and began their mandate on 1 January 2004. Under the slogan «Medellín la més educada», the movement combated social inequality and violence, guaranteeing quality education for all the citizenry. These advances took place in parallel to an ambitious master plan of infrastructures and to the drawing up of programmes connected with entrepreneurial culture, participative budgets and social urban planning.

The new Medellin cable car and metro, the reform of thoroughfares such as the Carabobo road and the construction of new bridges and squares have improved urban mobility and re-established links between the different parts of the city that were previously separated and antagonised. In addition, the so-called parks-libraries, a series of cutting-edge buildings equipped with computer rooms with internet connection, libraries, auditoriums and exhibition spaces have encouraged reading, contact with painting, literature, science and technology, benefiting over 1 million people in under a year.

Thanks to the various initiatives undertaken in the field of education between 2004 and 2007, Medellin has become the first city in Colombia to offer schooling with integral care in health, education, nutrition and recreation to boys and girls of pre-school age. Children’s education has also seen an increase of over nine percent in the same time period. The general improvement in the field of education has led to an increase in the number of young people in the system, expanding their opportunities for training and facilitating their access to the labour market.

Medellin has also experienced a decrease in violence, one of the major problems afflicting the Colombian city. Proof of this is the fact that the years of application of the plan have seen the lowest homicide rates of the past 28 years, situating Medellin below the average of the nation and of the principal Latin American cities. A symptom of this change has been the reduction in the index of repeat offenders in the Medellin penitentiaries, which has gone from 33% in the year 2003 to the current 13%.

The Integral Plan for the University City of Mexico DF is a programme designed and directed by the Special Projects Coordination of the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico), born to provide solutions to a variety of problems that affected this campus with a total extension of 730 hectares and home to approximately 120.000 students and 80.000 academics and workers. Initiated in June 2005 with the support of the University Trust, the Plan proposed three fields of action: improvements in transportation, technological renewal and maintaining both the public space of the campus and its artistic and architectural heritage.

The application of the Plan, which was completed in July 2008, has managed to end the serious problems of mobility affecting the road network derived from the indiscriminate parking of vehicles and the uncontrolled proliferation of informal vendors. The implantation of several pedestrian zones and a bicycle circuit with over 6.000 users, together with new buses (used daily by over 15.000 people), plus the creation of 2.400 parking spaces, have served to create more passable, green and safe public spaces. The plan has also permitted recovering the original image of the Campus thanks to illuminating seven murals and two buildings and to refurbishing five emblematic facades such as that of the Faculty of Medicine or the building of the Biomedical Research Institute. In addition, a major technological improvement has been undertaken with the installation of a wi-fi network for the entire campus area.

The decision to open the doors of the university during the weekends and to organise different cultural activities has allowed this new city model to benefit both the student and teacher population and the residents of the surrounding districts. All of these improvements were decisive in declaring the Central Campus a World Heritage Site at the UNESCO World Heritage Convention held in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 2 July 2007.

Initially founded in the year 1997 as an artistic collective, CUP (the Center for Urban Pedagogy) was incorporated in the year 2002 as a not-for-profit organisation that develops different projects on the social and political infrastructure of the built environment. These projects aim to increase the legibility of the world that surrounds us. The organization operates in the field of education through programmes connected with architecture, communication, design, and advocacy.

CUP creates projects about social justice, the urban environment and the practice of democracy, produced in collaboration with designers, community-based oranizations, schools and policymakers. These projects are addressed mainly to sections of society that are more deprived for reasons of race or class, with difficulties accessing basic services such as healthcare or housing. Through these initiatives, between 10.000 and 20.000 people are annually given solid training in the mechanisms of bureaucracy and the urban infrastructures that affect their daily lives. This knowledge equips them with the necessary tools to investigate and change what they see. Citizens recognise themselves within the framework of society and make beneficial choices, for themselves and for their communities.

By creating curricula for high schools, teaching tools in collaboration with community partners, and public programs and exhibits on the built environment, CUP is at the forefront of a new type of civic education that helps to establish the groundwork for democratic participation. Proof of this can be found in the large audiences and wide-ranging impact that CUP’s exhibition programmes, audiovisual productions, and publications are achieving, both nationally and internationally.

CUP projects have been presented at a variety of public spaces, art and architecture fairs, film festivals, and publications. Many of these projects were accompanied by conferences, talks or workshops that complemented the projects and gave a more in-depth treatment to the topics under discussion. Noteworthy among these projects are educational exhibitions on topics of urban renewal (City Without a Ghetto, 2003) and housing rights (Building Codes, 2001); educational programmes on water (Water Underground, 2006) and the infrastructure of the Internet (The Internet is Serious Business, 2008); and media projects on the language of development (Envisioning Development, 2008) and public housing (two episodes of Public Housing Television, 2004). Some of these projects have transcended the borders of the United States and have been presented in, among other spaces, the Netherlands Architecture Institute, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Leipzig and the Italian and American pavilions of the Venice Architecture Biennale.

With 19.324 inhabitants per Km2, the Mexican city of Nezahualcóyotl has one of the highest density ratios in the world. Thus, a space of just 110 hectares housed until early 2005 a completely obsolete sports centre and the Neza I dump, with 10 million tons of waste concentrated in 12 million m3. The pollution of the water, air and land caused by the high concentration of waste posed a serious threat to the health of the citizens.

In order to resolve this situation, and resulting from the synergies between the public and private sphere, the Ciudad Jardín Bicentenario (Bicentennial Garden City) was born, an initiative jointly promoted in March 2005 by the Mexican state and the administration of Nezahualcóyotl and developed by a team of multidisciplinary professionals from the company GUCACHE, S.A. The goal of the project, in keeping with the renovation process of the values of the Mexican left, was the integral recovery of the affected area to take it from being an environmental «liability» to an urban, social, environmental and economic «asset». A complex process of burying and waterproofing the dump, followed by the application of a system of treatment and reuse of the river water, has achieved the complete transformation of the area. At this time, the area is home to two universities with over 3000 pupils; a children’s hospital where 2300 patients are seen on a monthly basis; a new area of sports facilities at the service of 1200 weekly users, plus different green spaces. In total, the initiative has benefited over 2 million inhabitants of Nezahualcóyotl and its entire zone of influence.

Besides transforming Nezahualcóyotl into the first city in Mexico in waste separation and reuse of organic residue, the project has also served to generate jobs and to bring a new dynamic to the economy of the municipality. 2.600 jobs have been created in the construction sector, and 600 people who previously worked in waste collection have been relocated to a new waste industrialisation plant with a public-private cooperative structure in which the workers themselves have part participation.

The project for the University District of Santiago de Chile, a pioneer in Latin America, represents the first initiative for the integral development of a district in Chile. The University District, built during the first half of the past century, occupies a very important place in the collective memory of the city of Santiago. Here are located the universities of Diego Portales, of Andrés Bello, of Santo Tomás, the University of The Americas and a centre of the University of Chile. It is also home to 14 professional institutes, 4 technical training centres and various schools. All these centres accommodate a total of 45.000 pupils who, added to the 20.000 neighbours who reside in the district and the 10.000 users of the area, form a daily population of 80.000 people.

The principal objective of the strategic plan was to consolidate the growth of the district through giving shape to different economic, cultural, urban and social initiatives. In order to carry out the project, the University Corporation of Santiago was created in the year 2002. This organism is what is termed a District Management, a new public-private management model developed by the city hall of Santiago to improve specific sectors of the city.

Firstly, it committed itself to habitability and environmental quality, creating numerous metropolitan green areas such as the O’Higgins Park and the Equestrian Club; local public squares such as Plaza Manuel Rodríguez and different tree-lined avenues for the exclusive use of pedestrians. Multimodal accessibility has been boosted through the metro, a new road axis has been designed and traffic has been limited to the main access roads. It has all served to increase the use of the public space and has caused a growing dynamic of concentration, transforming the district into one of the most powerful functional sub-centres of the city and of the country.

Coinciding with this opening up of the district, numerous educational centres have opened their doors to the neighbours, giving them access to the libraries and computer rooms and organising different cultural activities that promote the integration of the citizens.

In the mid-nineteen-fifties the Cheonggyecheon stream was the symbol of poverty inherited from colonialism and the Second World War. The open sewer system in the very heart of the city of Seoul was a major problem that was simply «covered up» with a busy motorway. Fifty years later, the area was the noisiest and most congested in the capital of South Korea. The only way of resolving the problem was to intervene directly on the motorway built over the stream.

In June 2001 Lee Myung-bak was elected mayor and, fulfilling one of his electoral promises, demolished the motorway and started the process of regenerating the stream. The objective was to revitalise the area economically and to transform it into a focus that attracts tourists, business investment and international financial organisations. The project also sought to recover the lost national pride and the values of traditional culture through the restoration of some of the historical structures such as the Gwangtonggyo bridge (a representative construction built during the period of the Joseon dynasty, the last reigning family in Korea). The restoration of the stream was completed in the year 2005. The project was supported by the majority of the inhabitants of Seoul, as much as 79.1% of the population.

The restoration of the stream seeks to create forward-looking urban surroundings in keeping with the era of environmental awareness, understanding these surroundings in terms of both nature and humanity, with both coexisting in harmony. The restoration works can be viewed as the starting point from which green areas for Seoul are to be generated.

The project has involved the preservation of the urban centre as an historic and educational zone, the management of traffic through the creation of exclusive pedestrian zones, the improvement of the area’s competitiveness through the creation of a financial district, the recovery of historical resources from traditional cultures and the creation of various eco-friendly zones. At the same time, it has become an example for the rest of Asian cities with a similar set of problems as, for example, in China, where they view Seoul as a model to be followed.