![\"guardian](\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/guardian-cheonggyecheon-1024x614.jpg\")
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In September 2005, the new Cheonggyecheon Stream opened in downtown Seoul, looking for all the world like a modern urbanist\u2019s dream come true: not just a pedestrian-only public space bringing water and vegetation into the centre of a dense metropolitan area of 25 million, but one built where a traffic-filled stretch of elevated freeway used to stand.<\/p>\n
It also reclaimed the role of the original stream, which flowed through the site before the city\u2019s aggressively development-minded government paved over it in the late 1950s and, two decades later, built the Cheonggye Expressway \u2013 then a proud symbol of urban progress for the 1970s.<\/p>\n
As soon as the stream began flowing again (making ingenious use of the groundwater already pumped out by nearby subway lines), so too did praise for Seoul\u2019s mayor Lee Myung-bak, the project\u2019s highest-profile proponent \u2013 albeit one who\u2019d spent nearly 30 years working for and then running Hyundai Construction, a company responsible for some environmentally and aesthetically questionable work in the South Korean capital, including the Cheonggye Expressway.<\/p>\n
But in the $900m (\u00a3615m) Cheonggyecheon project (part-built by Hyundai), Lee found not just a vehicle for his redemption but a potential must-see tourist attraction for Seoul \u2013 with a big budget expressly dedicated to that purpose<\/a> \u2013 and an embodiment of its supposed transformation into a city that prioritises quality of life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n