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In the aftermath of World War II, the global housing crisis was immense and seemingly insurmountable: whether in the developed or developing world, decent shelter was in scarce supply, savings limited, and development funds in hot demand. Americans understood well the danger of slum proliferation, and acted promptly in key hot spots. Specifically, the International Housing Service within the Housing and Home Finance Agency targeted Taiwan and South Korea as the two most urgent sites for experimentation beginning in 1948 and 1953, respectively; technical assistance programs, mortgage guarantees, and support for new savings and loan institutions could potentially instill capitalist values of self-help while making good use of short-term foreign and local government aid. Results did not match expectations, however, as Taiwanese and Korean housing programs became increasingly dependent on state aid. This paper explores some of the causes and consequences of “bootstraps capitalism” in American overseas housing aid programs.

Nancy Kwak is interested in the evolution of cities and urban spaces in the twentieth century, with a particular focus on the role of planners, architects, and policymakers in reshaping neighborhoods and communities. While trained specifically in US urban history, Prof. Kwak currently pursues transnational, international, and comparative approaches to American urban history; in her current manuscript, Homeownership for All: American power and the politics of housing aid post-1945, she examines the impact of traveling American experts and advisers on housing policies in the developing world after 1945. Prof. Kwak has published various articles and coauthored a special edition of the Journal of Urban History on public housing in the Americas.

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This lecture discusses the aesthetics of sound and the ethics of bodily practice in South Korean Christian culture. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Seoul’s Protestant churches and colleges of music, I focus specifically on the way European-style classical singing (sǒngak) has emerged an emblem modern Christian personhood and national advancement. In particular, I explore how sǒngak singing in Korean churches has moved away from the coded affect of suffering and hardship that pervaded Korea’s 20th century expressive culture, thus presenting a stark contrast to styles of vocalization normally associated with the past.

Nicholas Harkness received his PhD from the University of Chicago, specializing in the semiotic anthropology of communication. His dissertation, “The Voices of Seoul: Sound, Body, and Christianity in South Korea,” was an ethnographic study of singing and the aesthetics of progress among Korean Evangelical Christians. He also has written on language and religion, paralinguistics and affect, performance and ritual, and the role of language structure in social differentiation. His research on the human voice in culture has led him to a more general interest in the anthropology of qualitative experience, and he currently is co-editing a special journal issue on this topic. Future research topics include intimacy and status in urban South Korea, and Korean linguistic “sound symbolism” as a semiotic window into social and material change.

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Planning Approaches for a Family-Friendly Central Edmonton

Thousands of people have moved to Edmonton’s urban core over the last decade, but one group of people remains conspicuously
underrepresented: families with children. As part of the new Capital City Downtown Plan, Edmonton’s City Council adopted the policy goal of a “family-friendly” urban core, but there is little direction as to how this will be achieved. Based on the findings of a series of thirteen key informant interviews, this paper explains why few families currently live in central Edmonton, identifies the key challenges, and evaluates possible planning approaches to making central Edmonton more family-friendly. Topics considered include amenity space provision, adult-only housing, and incentive programs to encourage the creation of family-oriented residential developments.

Thomas Beck is a second year student in the Masters of Science in Planning (MScPl) at the University of Toronto. He received his BA in Geography from Queen’s University in 2009.

Developing Complete Communities in the Suburbs: The Role of Retail

One of the guiding principles of the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe is to “build compact, vibrant, and complete communities,” where people can live, work, play and shop. The Growth Plan barely mentions retail, but shopping is a fundamental human activity and a major structuring force in people’s everyday lives. Unfortunately, recent retail development has seemingly been moving in the opposite direction to that which the Growth Plan promotes; vast power centres, where shoppers cannot even walk between stores, let alone to home or work, have been appearing at many highway interchanges, while efforts to create fine-grained, street-related retail have often failed. This presentation explores retail planning in Ontario and abroad with the goal of identifying how the public sector can promote the retail component of complete communities in the suburbs.

Anna Iannucci is a second year student in the University of Toronto’s Masters of Science in Planning Program. She received her B.A. in 2009, also from the University of Toronto, with a major in geography. Her primary research interest is retrofitting the suburbs to create more sustainable communities.

Building Communities to Live and Work: Evaluating Balance and Self-Containment in New Towns, Seoul Metropolitan Area

New towns in the Seoul Metropolitan Area (SMA) have been criticized for functioning as bedroom communities. Responding to the criticism, development actors and policy makers have attempted to create balanced, self-contained new towns with sufficient local employment opportunities. This paper explores how new town policies in the region have pursued jobs-housing balance and self-containment and examines the viability of the policies. Findings from key informant interviews suggest that the commitment towards local job creation derives from the development framework of new towns that sets out barriers toward a balanced growth by discouraging employment in new towns. Although much effort has been made, policies and strategies for promoting local employment remain ad-hoc and face challenges and constraints imposed by the legal and financial framework of the new town development.

Dukhee Nam is a second year student in the Masters of Science in Planning (MScPl) at the University of Toronto. He received his B.A. in Urban Planning at Yonsei University in 2010.