By Ella Seo
Photo Credit: Trazy Travel Blog, Gangnam District, Seoul, South Korea
In August 2022, a massive flash flood revealed the dark side of South Korea's most affluent district: Gangnam. Located in the national capital, Seoul, it is home to some of the country's highest real-estate prices, exclusive night clubs, and high-end luxury boutiques, serving as the inspiration for the Korean rapper, PSY’s iconic hit, “Gangnam Style.” Nevertheless, this South Korean “Beverly Hill” experienced massive rainfall of nearly 12 inches (Bae and Yeung, 2022), leaving pedestrians knee-deep in water, immersing cars, and submerging the city. Nine pedestrians died and the Gangnam residents evacuated.
The 2022 situation was not the only recent mass flooding event which has impacted Seoul. In September 2010 (2022) and July 2011 (Yim, 2022), the Gangnam district experienced torrential rainfalls, with its extreme runoffs overwhelming the city’s drainage capacity. As part of a megacity, the region is unique in its combination of having a highly dense population under the constraints of a urban design plan developed in the 1970s, focused on rapid growth. This has resulted in the reduction of green spaces in favor of housing, shopping centers, and other buildings, leading to a greater potential for flooding. Furthermore, as extreme weather conditions become increasingly likely under climate change, the city has been left unprepared for its coming impacts. This is the Gangnam district’s most inconvenient truth.
With the world’s urban population expected to increase approximately 15 percent (Lei et al., 2021) by 2050, city planners will need to reexamine the sustainability of urban plans, challenged by infrastructure unable to handle the escalating threat of climate change-induced rainfall. However, recent developments in spatial design and water systems could help to build metropolitan resilience towards these growing issues.
Beginning in the 1960s, the Gangnam region began to rapidly develop, as South Korea's citizens began to move to cities. Yet in 2022, urban locations present challenges as they are particularly vulnerable to flood susceptibility (Lei et al., 2021) due to their large number of inhabitants, lack of rainwater storage, and the fact that developers continue to build on at-risk, low-level areas to meet the demands of urbanization.
Sitting just above sea level, Souel’s infrastructure was designed to sustain itself during normal levels of rainfall. and its low-level areas are highly susceptible (Yim, 2022) to flooding in 2022. Megacities like Seoul present a modern global challenge: we are beginning to see that our city plans are outdated, while transformations from cities into megacities often suggest that developers leave major infrastructure concerns largely unaddressed.
Furthermore, significant flaws within the regional water infrastructure have been uncovered in recent years. While the original Gangnam area was agricultural, design planners in the 1980s constructed numerous, multi-story buildings on the land, using unyielding materials (2015) that meant with increased rainfall, the ground could no longer absorb excess water. Where the challenges of urbanization often appear socio-economic, the Gangnam flooding crisis speaks to the necessity of re-examining urban problems as environmental, solvable problems. As well, the country’s water management system uses pipes, rather than sustainable solutions, developers will need to re-imagine their structural interactivity with the water cycle.
Rather than relying on removing water, Gangnam developers should collectively re-channel and reuse the excess amounts of water that come from torrential rainfalls. Using China as a conceptual model for water management, Seoul and other megacities will need to look towards water sustainability as one answer to climate change.
Nonetheless, China provides potential solutions for Seoul’s crisis. The nation developed "sponge cities" in 2014 in response to its simultaneous water shortage and flooding issues.Sponge cities minimizes flooding, through designing systems which allows for the absorption and depositing of rainwater for future use. The concept provides for compatibility with the wider ecosystem, and dulls the impact for climate change through cooperating with the surrounding environment. Although there are just sixteen “sponge cities” in the world, they remain part of a larger, global movement aiming to transform the nature of the obstacle—excess water—into the solution—water use.
This can be seen with Jinan and Baicheng, China, two of the nation’s earliest “sponge cities.” The primary goals of Jinan’s transformation focused on infiltration, while Baicheng aimed to reduce water pollution (Li et al,, 2016). Through its engineering process of infiltration and natural storage, the “sponge city” concept advocates reusing water as the ultimate statement of resilience. Although there are just sixteen “sponge cities” in the world, they remain part of a larger, global movement aiming to transform the nature of the obstacle—excess water—into the solution—water use.
Despite these innovations however, implementing a “sponge city” in Gangnam might prove to be complicated. The approach holds several technical, geographical, and design-based challenges. Planners will need to gather significant amounts of domestic data (Li et al., 2017) on potential locales, while some places are geologically unsuitable due to poor soil conditions.Moreover, “sponge cities” require specialized designs (Xia et al., 2017) that take into consideration their topography, soil, design, and current infrastructure. Although further urban design innovations are yet to come, overcoming “sponge city” obstacles may be the beginning of more sustainable cities. And in the case of Gangnam, re-design is at the center of its future sustainability.
Currently, Seoul flood prevention designs aim to manage rather than re-imagine its crisis. By targeting its river embankments (Kim, 2015), sewage system, and pumping methods, the city is trying to keep up with climate change by reinforcing its infrastructure. Rather than relying on removing water, Gangnam developers should collectively re-channel and reuse the excess amounts of water that come from torrential rainfalls. Using China as a conceptual model for water management, Seoul and other megacities will need to look towards water sustainability as one answer to climate change. As a response to excessive flooding across the globe, the United Nations aims to bring communities together in light of climate change, a key necessity if cities are to develop sustainable water management systems.
With CO2 emissions exacerbating the effects of climate change, repurposing urban locales into sustainable areas will shape the design of future cities. And with urban green designs in mind, a future Seoul should be better equipped to face the floods.
Works Cited
Bae, Gawon, and Jessie Yeung. “Record Rainfall Kills at Least 9 in Seoul as Water Floods Buildings, Submerges Cars.” CNN, Cable News Network, 10 Aug. 2022, edition.cnn.com/2022/08/09/asia/seoul-south-korea-rain-flooding-intl-hnk/index.html.
“Flooded Gangnam, a ‘slap in the Face’ for Seoul Mayor.” INQUIRER.Net, The Korea Herald, 11 Aug. 2022, newsinfo.inquirer.net/1644393/flooded-gangnam-a-slap-in-the-face-for-seoul-mayor.
Hyun-su, Yim. “[Kh Explains] Why Is ‘invincible Gangnam’ Prone to Flooding?” The Korea Herald, The Korea Herald, 9 Aug. 2022, www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20220809000685.
Jin, Ri & Yoo, Jae-yong & Lee, Kyoo-seock. (2015). Investigation of Urban Flooding Characteristics due to Heavy Summer Rainfall in Seoul using GIS. Journal of Korean Society of Hazard Mitigation. 15. 101-108. 10.9798/KOSHAM.2015.15.6.101.
Kim, Young-ran. “Seoul’s Flood Control Policy.” Seoul Solution, The Seoul Institute, 4 July 2017, seoulsolution.kr/en/content/seoul%E2%80%99s-flood-control-policy.
Li, Hui, Liuqian Ding, Minglei Ren, Changzhi Li, and Hong Wang. 2017. "Sponge City Construction in China: A Survey of the Challenges and Opportunities" Water 9, no. 9: 594. https://doi.org/10.3390/w9090594
Li, Xiaoning & Li, Junqi & Fang, Xing & Gong, Yongwei & Wang, Wenliang. (2016). Case Studies of the Sponge City Program in China. 295-308. 10.1061/9780784479858.031.
Xia, J., Zhang, Y., Xiong, L. et al. Opportunities and challenges of the Sponge City construction related to urban water issues in China. Sci. China Earth Sci. 60, 652–658 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-016-0111-8
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