118 SERIESFood and City Experiences
The sense of having settled in a city is
often marked by familiarising oneself with
where best to procure food, both in terms of
dining out and shopping for groceries. Of all
cognitive urban theories, the daily ritual of
consuming food can be considered one of
the most significant ways of establishing an
image of the city.
When I first moved to Sejong, it was not at
all easy to buy ingredients. There was no
problem when it came to buying a bottle
of water or milk or ice cream, mainly due
to the numerous ‘planned’ convenience
stores or small mom and pop stores at each
and every corner. However, the attempt
to buy a certain type of apple or tomato
would require diversion from this route. As
a resident of Beomjigi village 10-danji, I had
to take my car and drive to buy groceries
at the large supermarkets in Cheotmaeul
or Haengjeong town, which I found myself
frequenting less and less. Not only was it
quite far away, but my lifestyle and family
routine did not require buying in bulk. It
was around this time – when I had become
used to a more minimalist mode of grocery
shopping, which involved walking to the
mom and pop store just by my house to buy
a few pieces of fruit at a time – that I learnt
of the nearby Shingshing Marketplace, a
local food store in Areum-dong. It came
as a surprise to find such fresh, delicious,
and affordable fruit and vegetables, as well
as rice cakes, so close to home. Only 15
minutes away by foot, it was also possible
to buy a little fresh produce at a time. My
daily diet began to consist of onions and
tomatoes from Janggun-myeon, blueberries
from Yeonseo-myeon, corn on the cob from
Jochiwon-eup, crunchy peppers and tofu
from Jeonui-myun, pumpkin leaves from
Yeondong-myun and sticky black rice-cakes
from Bugang-myeon.
The Sejong local food store was first
launched in September 2015 in association
with the Dodam-dong Shingshingmarketplace. The second store opened in
January 2018 in Areum-dong, followed by
two more, which are planned for completion
by 2021. In 2018, South Korea recorded
229 local food store nationwide, with a
recorded total annual revenue of 433.5
billion KRW in 2018.▼^1 This is equivalent to
an annual revenue of 2 billion KRW per local
food store, and considering that the two
Sejong Shingshing marketplaces grossed
an annual revenue of 23.8 billion KRW in
2018, one can estimate and approximate
an average of 11.9 billion KRW per store.▼^2
This shows that Sejong local food stores
are significantly more active than in other
districts.
Recently, food has begun to emerge
as a central theme in both urban and
architectural discussions. Experts stress
how food can establish regional identities
and increase the vitality of regions. Food
can be thought of as a unified system that
encompasses the processes of production,
distribution, consumption and disposal,
impacting the city’s existence and the
allocation of urban space. In the year 2000
the article ‘The food system: a stranger to
the planning field’ was published, which
has become something of classic in the
literature and forming a returning point of
debate when discussing the relationship
between food and urban planning. As
the title hints towards, the discussion of
food in the field of urban planning has
been, more often than not, ‘unfamiliar’ or
a ‘stranger’.▼^3 However, the last 20 years
have seen a change in circumstances, with
food re-established as a central element
in contemporary urban planning. The
New Urban Agenda (NUA) adopted at the
2016 UN Habitat III Summit includes food
security and nutrition in its Declaration on
Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements,
hence the calls for the reinforcement and
diffusion of urban planning and design
methods related to food.▼^4
Some time later, in 2018, the UN Food andAgriculture Organization (FAO) published
an official report titled Integrating Food into
Urban Planning. This report introduces the
issues at stake influencing how regional
food movements, including local food,
have been integrated into urban planning
and design, pointing to positive case
studies from all over the world. The UN has
promoted the importance of food systems
in the establishment of better human
settlement environments and in enhancing
the quality of life. If so, what would be the
appropriate way to publicize and discuss
the relationship between food and the city
in South Korea? While all of this had been
loitering at the back of my mind, in the real
world Sejong’s Shingshing marketplace had
been growing at a phenomenal rate each
year through growing customer satisfaction.
This was a moment of revelation, my
daydreaming aside.The Urban and the Rural
Meanwhile, local food in Sejong is inherently
different from the food justice paradigm
proposed by the human rights based
framework advocated by the NUA or FAO of
the UN as a basic model when discussing
food and urban issues. The phenomenon
of the Shingshing marketplace can be
interpreted as an extremely case-specific
and exclusive example in which a new
town with a central demographic of young
middle-class intellectuals have used food to
realise the potential of the coexistence of
the urban and rural. Within this framework,
a plethora of Sejong specific factors come
into play, such as the demographic society,
spatial environment, local governance and
regional politics.
From the beginning, Sejong was an urban-
rural complex city that came into existence
by forcefully shifting the administrative
functions of the central government to a
rural environment. The project departed
under the premise of applying a fresh
approach to resolutions and to turningaway from existing methods concerning the
issue of rural and urban co-existence. The
majority of attempts, which were previously
carried out in order to integrate or enforce
coexistence between the urban and the
rural, have mostly followed a pattern of
zero-sum games in which basic services
and public assets establish a game of cat
and mouse. In comparison, Sejong has
grown over the past five years by employing
the familiar medium of food as a means of
allowing the urban and the rural to coexist,
yet this case has hardly been investigated in
relation with Sejong’s urban and architectural
environment. While the agrarian population
and cultivated area (farmland) of the urban
and rural complex city Sejong continues
to decrease, customer membership, daily
average consumption, annual revenues, and
even the number of farmhouses registered
to supply products have been increasing
each year.▼^5 What does these phenomena
signify?
Actively drawing upon the specificity of
the spatial environment of Sejong, in which
the urban districts and rural districts are
connected through a unified administrative
network, the local food movement has been
influenced by regional politics. The regional
politics of Sejong have been tooled towards
promoting the successful cohabitation
between the original residents of the rural
districts and the migrants in the urban
districts, and seeking solutions through
food have become much more feasible
than any other existing approaches with
relatively small risks. Before the Shingshing
marketplace opened its doors, Sejong
opened sam-iljang and oh-iljang, direct-
sales farmers market, in public land or
the outdoor spaces of apartment blocks.
Local food became one of Sejong’s central
agendas, due to Lee Choonhui (mayor,
Sejong Metropolitan Autonomous City)
and the local food act that was legislated
in April 2015, along with the establishment
of the corporation Sejong Local Food as118 16 V61 LIVING SEJONG, READING SEJONG: QUESTIONS AFTER ONE YEAR 3Food and City Experiences
The sense of having settled in a city is
often marked by familiarising oneself with
where best to procure food, both in terms of
dining out and shopping for groceries. Of all
cognitive urban theories, the daily ritual of
consuming food can be considered one of
the most significant ways of establishing an
image of the city.
When I first moved to Sejong, it was not at
all easy to buy ingredients. There was no
problem when it came to buying a bottle
of water or milk or ice cream, mainly due
to the numerous ‘planned’ convenience
stores or small mom and pop stores at each
and every corner. However, the attempt
to buy a certain type of apple or tomato
would require diversion from this route. As
a resident of Beomjigi village 10-danji, I had
to take my car and drive to buy groceries
at the large supermarkets in Cheotmaeul
or Haengjeong town, which I found myself
frequenting less and less. Not only was it
quite far away, but my lifestyle and family
routine did not require buying in bulk. It
was around this time – when I had become
used to a more minimalist mode of grocery
shopping, which involved walking to the
mom and pop store just by my house to buy
a few pieces of fruit at a time – that I learnt
of the nearby Shingshing Marketplace, a
local food store in Areum-dong. It came
as a surprise to find such fresh, delicious,
and affordable fruit and vegetables, as well
as rice cakes, so close to home. Only 15
minutes away by foot, it was also possible
to buy a little fresh produce at a time. My
daily diet began to consist of onions and
tomatoes from Janggun-myeon, blueberries
from Yeonseo-myeon, corn on the cob from
Jochiwon-eup, crunchy peppers and tofu
from Jeonui-myun, pumpkin leaves from
Yeondong-myun and sticky black rice-cakes
from Bugang-myeon.
The Sejong local food store was first
launched in September 2015 in association
with the Dodam-dong Shingshing
marketplace. The second store opened in
January 2018 in Areum-dong, followed by
two more, which are planned for completion
by 2021. In 2018, South Korea recorded
229 local food store nationwide, with a
recorded total annual revenue of 433.5
billion KRW in 2018.▼^1 This is equivalent to
an annual revenue of 2 billion KRW per local
food store, and considering that the two
Sejong Shingshing marketplaces grossed
an annual revenue of 23.8 billion KRW in
2018, one can estimate and approximate
an average of 11.9 billion KRW per store.▼^2
This shows that Sejong local food stores
are significantly more active than in other
districts.
Recently, food has begun to emerge
as a central theme in both urban and
architectural discussions. Experts stress
how food can establish regional identities
and increase the vitality of regions. Food
can be thought of as a unified system that
encompasses the processes of production,
distribution, consumption and disposal,
impacting the city’s existence and the
allocation of urban space. In the year 2000
the article ‘The food system: a stranger to
the planning field’ was published, which
has become something of classic in the
literature and forming a returning point of
debate when discussing the relationship
between food and urban planning. As
the title hints towards, the discussion of
food in the field of urban planning has
been, more often than not, ‘unfamiliar’ or
a ‘stranger’.▼^3 However, the last 20 years
have seen a change in circumstances, with
food re-established as a central element
in contemporary urban planning. The
New Urban Agenda (NUA) adopted at the
2016 UN Habitat III Summit includes food
security and nutrition in its Declaration on
Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements,
hence the calls for the reinforcement and
diffusion of urban planning and design
methods related to food.▼^4
Some time later, in 2018, the UN Food andAgriculture Organization (FAO) published
an official report titled Integrating Food into
Urban Planning. This report introduces the
issues at stake influencing how regional
food movements, including local food,
have been integrated into urban planning
and design, pointing to positive case
studies from all over the world. The UN has
promoted the importance of food systems
in the establishment of better human
settlement environments and in enhancing
the quality of life. If so, what would be the
appropriate way to publicize and discuss
the relationship between food and the city
in South Korea? While all of this had been
loitering at the back of my mind, in the real
world Sejong’s Shingshing marketplace had
been growing at a phenomenal rate each
year through growing customer satisfaction.
This was a moment of revelation, my
daydreaming aside.The Urban and the Rural
Meanwhile, local food in Sejong is inherently
different from the food justice paradigm
proposed by the human rights based
framework advocated by the NUA or FAO of
the UN as a basic model when discussing
food and urban issues. The phenomenon
of the Shingshing marketplace can be
interpreted as an extremely case-specific
and exclusive example in which a new
town with a central demographic of young
middle-class intellectuals have used food to
realise the potential of the coexistence of
the urban and rural. Within this framework,
a plethora of Sejong specific factors come
into play, such as the demographic society,
spatial environment, local governance and
regional politics.
From the beginning, Sejong was an urban-
rural complex city that came into existence
by forcefully shifting the administrative
functions of the central government to a
rural environment. The project departed
under the premise of applying a fresh
approach to resolutions and to turningaway from existing methods concerning the
issue of rural and urban co-existence. The
majority of attempts, which were previously
carried out in order to integrate or enforce
coexistence between the urban and the
rural, have mostly followed a pattern of
zero-sum games in which basic services
and public assets establish a game of cat
and mouse. In comparison, Sejong has
grown over the past five years by employing
the familiar medium of food as a means of
allowing the urban and the rural to coexist,
yet this case has hardly been investigated in
relation with Sejong’s urban and architectural
environment. While the agrarian population
and cultivated area (farmland) of the urban
and rural complex city Sejong continues
to decrease, customer membership, daily
average consumption, annual revenues, and
even the number of farmhouses registered
to supply products have been increasing
each year.▼^5 What does these phenomena
signify?
Actively drawing upon the specificity of
the spatial environment of Sejong, in which
the urban districts and rural districts are
connected through a unified administrative
network, the local food movement has been
influenced by regional politics. The regional
politics of Sejong have been tooled towards
promoting the successful cohabitation
between the original residents of the rural
districts and the migrants in the urban
districts, and seeking solutions through
food have become much more feasible
than any other existing approaches with
relatively small risks. Before the Shingshing
marketplace opened its doors, Sejong
opened sam-iljang and oh-iljang, direct-
sales farmers market, in public land or
the outdoor spaces of apartment blocks.
Local food became one of Sejong’s central
agendas, due to Lee Choonhui (mayor,
Sejong Metropolitan Autonomous City)
and the local food act that was legislated
in April 2015, along with the establishment
of the corporation Sejong Local Food asLIVING SEJONG, READING SEJONG: QUESTIONS AFTER ONE YEAR 3