Local Agenda 21: Seoul Toward an Environmental City

Abstract

Seoul is an overpopulated and overconcentrated nation's capital divided by the Han River, the Nation's River. Seoul needs a new environmental perspective. At the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992, environmental local agenda setting was mandated. Seoul and many cities in Asian nations needed such a mandate from the United Nations. However, not a significant evaluation of Local Agenda 21 has been made. This article is a small evaluation of Seoul's Local Agenda 21 for a comparative analysis of other Asian cities. Without revolutionary change of local government actions toward environmental city, the UN mandates are meaningless. The author proposes a paradigm change in the Kuhnian sense, but the business is going as usual lamentably.