Seon Young Lee

I am interested in housings, gentrification, urban regeneration and in particular, the relationship between space and society. Space reflects social activity and space also constructs social activity. That is, Space has an active role in the creation or maintenance of social inequalities. We can observe highly segregated social area as reflecting inequalities of class, race, age and gender. I think Gentrification as one of the most representative examples to explain these phenomenons. In the public media, gentrification has been presented as the preeminent symbol of the larger urban redevelopment that is taking place. However, we should pay our attention to the side effects, such as displacement or replacement by gentrification and the resistance toward gentrification. The concept of the right to the city inspired me the mediation between positive and negative effects caused by gentrification. I‘d like to explore this thesis and its application and conduct case studies on urban transformation in Korea compared with those in the UK.

I studied geography and social science in Korea National University of Education. After graduating, I taught geography and social science in high school for 8 years. In the meantime, I achieved the chance to study more through the government’s scholarship, and finished my M.A in the education of Geography in 2009. The research concerning gentrification is in the early stage in S.Korea and my M.A research titled neighbourhood changes and gentrification process in urban redevelopment district: the case study in Yongsan area, Seoul was nearly the first study in this topic. At the end of finishing my research, a terrible accident between dwellers, developers and the government occurred in my research area. It gave me a lot of questions about social-spatial relationship and inequalities, so I began my doctoral studies to examine my queries at KCL in January 2011.

Professor Chris Hamnett