Songdo IBD (International Business District) is a stark example of the complexities of master planning in the 21st century. Whilst its website cheers for a new economic day coming for this future city, it's hard to see the reality on the ground. It feels like the end of the Earth--if it can even be attributed to Earth. It is 100 million sq feet of seemingly unoccupied space (http://www.songdo.com/songdo-international-business-district/the-city/master-plan.aspx.) Of course, it is not nearly as vacant as I am claiming, but even if there are inhabitants, the sense is one of desolation. In person it is as beautiful as the mock-ups predicted due to a complete lack of humanity to sully it.

I really did take these pictures. If it looks like walking through a 3-D project proposal, that's exactly how it feels. At points. My sense was a great tension between the shiny newness, so surreal in its forwardness, and the abandonment more akin to ruins. Perhaps it was the searing 38C heat of a mid-summer day, but it felt like venturing around future ruins. Of course, it didn't help that some areas were abandoned. While a foot bridge in Central Park had two attendants polishing it, just a short walk away, unfinished bicycle and walking paths were overgrown. Tomorrow City, the showcase of the future, had gone empty.

Maybe when the trees grow more full Songdo will feel more hospitable, but for now, the only reprieve from the climate are the overbearing bridges. One of the few places where I actually encountered people was under one such bridge. A group of seniors were taking a rest in the only place that provided shade. An interesting juxtaposition, these elderly folks resting under a hyper-modern structure built on the very place where MacArthur first landed when they were young (there is a monument to this strange factoid.) The group seemed completely out-of-place. Like they had parachuted in from elsewhere. The Songdo Master plan does not purport the city to be a city for the elderly, but a place of cutting edge innovation for the (younger) entrepreneurial class. As the trees are still too young to provided reasonable shade, this group (the majority of the people in the park all together) were occupying a space in an unpredicted way. Sitting on the footings of the bridge rather than on the allotted benches a few metres away.