This is the city that I am currently in and should be staying in during the course of my residency (I'll update once the lease has been signed). The city is very impressive in itself, especially since it did not exist before 1956. Not that it was a town or something smaller; it was flat land, nothing at all. During this time the government officials saw the need for a centralized capital city for the forming providence and as such, Changwon was established.
Once this happened, they went into the planning stages for the city. Instead of just going at the city they put a lot of thought and effort into the city's need and purpose. Besides being the capital, Changwon is one of the premiere manufacturing cities in Korea. This is because of how the city is designed as much as the drive of the people that live in it.
The city was designed to be split in half, part residential and part industrial. One main road (4-lane road) splits the town in two, providing the border between the two halves. This design makes the city very drivable, and very livable as you don't have some major manufacturing company working out of your backyard.
Just being around the city, you can see the planning that went into making this city, as well as the rest of the surrounding areas. Everything feels to have been done with a purpose, with a definite goal in mind. This is also true about the residential side of the city. Most of the population lives in large apartment buildings similar to what I will be in. Each building houses hundreds of people, and there can be up to 20 buildings in any given park. This creates a significant population density in these areas, however this has been planned for. Parking is typically below the buildings, electric lines are underground, bike lanes are provided. Most anything that you could think of has been thought of and sorted out. It is a very odd sensation, Changwon has nearly twice the population of Pittsburgh, yet it feels much, much smaller.
The area that I am currently in is called City-7. It is a very modern and Americanized part of the country because many of the shops have english words and english speaking persons working in the shops. City-7 is a complex with a 3 story shopping mall and apartment complex. So it has most anything that I could need. I will probably cover this further in a later blog post. I'm thinking about covering a specific topic of interest in each post as well as the general day-to-day activities going on in my life. I hope that will provide a good view of my experiences, as well as the Korean people and culture.
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