Sewoon Global Forum 2020: Local-Recall Opening Event

The year 2020 witnessed several issues, including the transnational infectious disease, climate change, resource depletion, and limitations of mass production. This alarming global crisis forces us to reconfigure social distances as well as the industrial and economic distances of systems that sustain our lives. Now, more than ever, it is time to focus on the “local”.

With this background, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom Korea Office together with Beta City Center Sewoon Campus University of Seoul, has launched the Sewoon Global Forum, which will be a venue for empirical discourses around technology and urban policies in preparation for the transition towards a new living condition. The Sewoon Global Forum is based on the Sewoon industrial ecosystem and consists of an online series combined with a colloquium. The opening event “Urban Manufacturing, Now Again” was held on June 18 2020 where experts from three different regions talked about the challenges and changes of urban manufacturing.

The event was opened by Christian Taaks, Head of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation Korea. The participating experts were Jie-Eun Hwang from the Beta City Center Sewoon Campus at the University of Seoul, Chaewon Ahn from the Civic Data Design Lab at MIT, and Hanbyl Shim from the Center for Asian Urban Societies, Seoul National University. Adam Friedman, from the Pratt Institute of Community Development and Joanna Reynolds from Made in NYC, and Adrian Vickery Hill from the Cities of Making Project.

After the main event, the epilogue session took place for informal, but in-depth discussions with the audience. The next online talk show on local smart manufacturing will take place in July.