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2024ARC001
Doctoral thesis

The North Korean microdistrict : historical developments, case studies, and prospects

  • 2024

PhD: Università della Svizzera italiana

English Microdistrict, a socialist urban housing model theory that was widely spread throughout the socialist countries, was one of the dominant factors that influenced the built environment as well as social structure of North Korea. North Korea adopted the theory since the reconstruction period from the Korean War in the early 1950s and developed its own guideline in 1963. When numbers of microdistricts were being applied throughout the nation, from the Kim Il Sung regime to Kim Jong Il and the current Kim Jong Un regime, they have been developed beyond the guidelines that were suggested in the 1960s. Not only the leader’s architectural ego but also construction technology made microdistrict evolve from its early model to current high-rise compact model. Six cases from Pyongyang are studied based on the followings; location, scales in site and buildings, layouts of the block and unit plans, construction methods, and building systems. As it has always been the model city for other cities in the nation, cases in Pyongyang were considered as representative cases of North Korea. Two cases from each regime were selected to understand how the microdistricts have been evolved throughout the period from the reconstruction era till recently. The case study will focus on what were the original intentions of the microdistrict theory and how they were negotiated throughout the period. Based on the study, the research suggests what new models could be proposed that reflect both original social aspects of microdistrict and new economic demands in the transformation of the country from socialist economy to market-oriented economy.
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Language
  • English
Classification
Urbanism
License
License undefined
Open access status
green
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Persistent URL
https://n2t.net/ark:/12658/srd1330310
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