![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Koreascape-Seoul-and-Los-Angeles.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Each month\u00a0I join\u00a0Kurt Achin, host of\u00a0Koreascape<\/a><\/em> on Seoul\u2019s English-language radio station TBS eFM, for\u00a0an exploration of one of Seoul\u2019s urban spaces. This month, having just been to Los Angeles for the first time in the two years since I moved from there to Seoul, I ask what these ever-changing cities can learn from one another. How much does Los Angeles remain a metropolis that “makes nonsense of history and breaks all the rules,” in the words of architectural historian Reyner Banham<\/a>, and\u00a0to what extent has it moved past what\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em> architectural critic Christopher Hawthorne calls<\/a> the “building blocks” of its postwar self, “the private car, the freeway, the single-family house, and the lawn”? Does Seoul’s constant construction of more and denser \u2014 but blander \u2014 forms of housing offer a solution to Los Angeles’ worsening cost-of-living (and, increasingly, homelessness) crisis? Can both cities meet their separate challenges of finding a built form and aesthetic commensurate with their formidable status in the 21st century?<\/p>\n