You Can Build a City, But You Can’t Force It to Be Loved

You Can Build a City, But You Can’t Force It to Be Loved

"A city is not a map—it is a memory."Yet in many of South Korea’s most meticulously planned developments, what stands is not a living city but an architectural projection—spaces delivered in full, but inhabited in part.Across the landscape of new towns, infrastructure is in place, buildings are pristine, and zoning is executed with clinical precision. But something is missing: density, spontaneity, ritual. What was built to house life now strugg…