Gangnam Style and Neighborhood Identity

Most people have seen the mega-hit video “Gangnam Style” by South Korean rapper Psy. The K-pop video, which was released on July 15, 2012 on YouTube, climbed to 100 million views in 51 days, beating Justin Bieber's "Baby" and Rebecca Black's "Friday," and prompted an overwhelming number of response videos. The lyrics are catchy, the dance moves quirky, making it addictive to watch over and over.  The video mocks the Gangnam district of Seoul, an affluent and hip neighborhood where young people go to party. In the song, Psy describes the kind of guy he is and the kind of girl he wants, illustrating the pretentious culture of people who hang out in Gangnam. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0?rel=0&w=560&h=315] The music video is a sensation gone viral. Currently, the music video has been viewed over 530 million times on YouTube and is the site's second most watched video. It has broken the Guinness World Record for the most likes on YouTube and has 2 million likes on Facebook. Katy Perry and Britney Spears are tweeting about it.

Politicians and business leaders such as British Prime Minister David Cameron and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt have learned the dance moves. New parodies of the video are popping up daily – from wedding parties to Philippine prison inmates. U.N. Secretary Ban Ki-Moon has praised the video as a "force for world peace" and South Korea’s top economic official Bahk Jae Wan pointed to the video as an example of creativity and international competition that the nation needs. Millions around the world are obsessed with his moves, style and music.

Seoul’s Gangnam neighborhood has also been in the spotlight. The video was filmed throughout the Gangnam area in the tour buses, spas, shopping areas and even atop one of the World Trade Center Seoul buildings. As a result of “Gangnam Style’s” success, the neighborhood itself is now known world-wide alongside Beverly Hills, and Roppongi as ultra-affluent and trendy hotbeds. Gangnam has been featured major news outlets in the US and around the world and South Korea tourism organizations are hopeful that the video drives more visitors and consumers to the shops, services and businesses in the district.

A strong identity for a neighborhood or region is something that city officials, planners and designers strive to create. These reputations attract new residents, consumers and eventually grow local economies. What would be your neighborhood's equivalent of “Gangnam Style”?

Favorite Design and Urbanism Blog Posts for the Week of Oct. 8

Landscape Urbanism explains what's in a name. Cannon Design on rebranding public transit. Johnston Architects weighs the worth of a highly designed (and priced) water bottle. The bellwether of a city's cycling infrastructure: women cyclists.

What’s in a name? Sarah Peck, founder of the site Landscape Urbanism, blogs about how the term “landscape urbanism” does matter as the journal ‘Scape 2012 features Landscape Urbanism and reviews the blog beyond its name.

“While the dialogue about terminology is important, we also should pause that dialogue for a minute and consider that the larger effort to ‘engage landscape ideas, and landscape thinking, … in broad discourse,’ is what our larger disciplines of landscape, urbanism, planning and architecture need.” – Sarah Peck

Via Landscape Urbanism

Rebranding buses and public transit. Chris Whitcomb of Cannon Design blogs about rebranding public transportation after reading an article on the commute of the future in the Wall Street Journal.

“I grew up in a small town where there only real forms of public transportation were riding your bike, walking or catching the school bus. It’s only in the past five years that I’ve really come to see the benefits of utilizing trains, taxis and the occasional bus. In a world that needs to urbanize and focus on sustainability, efficient public transportation is a must.” – Chris Whitcomb

Via Cannon Design Blog

Related: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444358804578016191463503384.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_careerjournal

World’s best water bottle. Riley MacPhee blogs on his conflicted emotions on a $40 water bottle that is attractive and unique yet has gone too far with its 16 different components and assembled using 65 different steps.

“This very well might be the world’s best water bottle, from a user standpoint, but is that something we should care about? Is it worth $40? … When it comes down to it, it’s a pretty benign product. But the whole goal of the designer is to raise the stakes, to redefine what it means to be, and to own a water bottle. Is that a good thing?” –  Riley MacPhee

Via Johnston Architects Blogs

Bike stores for women. SpokesWomen, an organization that aims to create a national web of knowledge and resources for women in the bike industry, believes that female-specific stores and gear can also help women bikers feel more safe and comfortable when they start riding.

According to a 2009 study, just 24 percent of bicycle trips in America are made by women. But as it stands, cycling is overwhelmingly male-dominated. A Scientific American article cites that “women are considered an ‘indicator species’ for bike-friendly cities for several reasons. First, studies across disciplines as disparate as criminology and child­rearing have shown that women are more averse to risk than men. In the cycling arena, that risk aversion translates into increased demand for safe bike infrastructure as a prerequisite for riding.”

Via The Atlantic Cities

Written by: Genevieve Walker

Related: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=getting-more-bicyclists-on-the-road

What Will Pop-up Tomorrow?

The pop-up urbanism trend that started with parklets in San Francisco is spreading across the country. These temporary parks in place of parking spots have shown up in Oakland, Portland, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, and even smaller cities like Asheville, NC. The concept has spread beyond temporary park space and is now testing retail concepts in gentrifying areas.

The idea for parklets emerged in 2005 from PARK(ing) Day in San Francisco, an annual event that will happen on Sept. 21 this year, when residents reclaimed a parking space for the day by setting up chairs, tables and plants to create a temporary park. Last year, PARK (ing) Day occurred in 162 cities and 35 countries. The true “parklet” movement was kicked off in March 2010 when San Francisco approved the building of a parklet in front of Café Mojo on Divisadero Street. Another parklet milestone is the Powell Street Promenade, the largest parklet in San Francisco that was installed in 2011. This area provides a space to eat, talk and relax, providing people a reprieve from the bustle of the corridor, which is one of the busiest in the nation and frequented by more than 100,000 people on an average weekend.

Earlier this month, I dropped by one of San Francisco’s latest urban intervention “SqFt”. Spanning several blocks between 5th and 7th on Market Street, the organizers programmed activities throughout the day that gave retail renters in the area a chance to try something new and it gave virtual companies the opportunity to interact with customers in person. The day began with coffee for bike commuters, a yummy tamale vendor provide fuel for drumming lessons, etsy artist sales and yoga lessons.

With a surge of interest in urbanism across the country, communities are rethinking public space. The advantage of pop-ups is that they offer fast and inexpensive tools for making a big impact. Designers and planners are heavily involved in the big and long term moves of a city and each project becomes the latest calling card for the firms involved. These mini moves are also opportunities to distinguish a firm’s design, creativity and philosophies. The phenomenon of pop-up urbanism, also known as tactical urbanism, has not only gained popularity, but has created a way to test new concepts before embarking on substantial political and financial commitments with the intention of improving the quality of human life in sustainable way.

What started as parklets has evolved to temporary storefronts like [storefront] Olson Kundig’s experimental work place for the firm's community collaborations in Seattle and David Baker’s San Francisco StoreFrontLab, a year-long exploration of storefronts as places of community, creativity and local industry. [storefront] has performed as a record store, a mushroom farm, Hardware [store] and is currently an exhibition focused on the individuals working in the Puget Sound region to eradicate poverty and homelessness, Skid Road.

Olson Kundig Architects in Seattle uses the [storefront] below their studio for community collaborative exhibitions

The upcoming pop-up at StoreFrontLab is the Post-Car Travel Agency, which opens on Aug. 17 for a week of talks, one-on-one travel services and discussions on living car-free. Before that, it was a craft shop selling artisan goods such as skateboards, clothing and sandcastle molds.

Tactical urbanism seems to be the current motif in the architecture world. The theme of this year’s U.S. Pavilion at the 13th International Venice Architecture Biennale is Spontaneous Interventions: design actions for the common good. The biennale will focus on compelling and actionable strategies, ranging from urban farms to guerilla bike lanes, temporary architecture to poster campaigns, urban navigation apps to crowdsourced city planning.

Conger Moss Guillard’s (CMG) Parkmobiles, which are robust, movable containers with lush gardens that fit in a street parking space, was accepted into this year’s prestigious Venice Biennale. While everyone is embracing the gush of interest in pop-up urbanism, there are some concerns. How can tactical urbanism work in architecture and the formal planning process? Mike Lydon, principal at Brooklyn’s Street Plans Collaborative and author of Tactical Urbanism, Volume 2, is among the tactical urbanists contributing to the Venice Biennale. He says that the planning process won’t be replaced by pop-up-urbanism.

“Following up on comprehensive planning efforts, the neighborhood-wide or city-wide planning process can use tactical urbanism to take some of the most popular ideas and really do things quickly rather than have them wait on the shelf for the million-dollar funding stream. Tactical urbanism is a tool for the more formal planning process,” Lydon said in an interview with the Architect’s Newspaper.

What do you think is next in the pop-up evolution?

Check out our Tactical Urbanism Board on Pinterest!