Cultural Manufacturing Resilience in Seoul’s Seongsu Neighborhood: Urban Industrial Transformation and Survival Tactics

초록

This chapter examines cultural manufacturing resilience in Seoul's Seongsu neighborhood, investigating how small-batch, design-driven production persists despite rapid urban transformation. Through historical-institutional analysis and interviews with 20 cultural manufacturers, we identify how planning policies since the 1980s have transformed Seongsu's industrial landscape while creating conditions for manufacturing adaptation. Our findings reveal two distinct manufacturer types – New Wave Cultural Producers and Multi-generation Cultural Manufacturers – employing complementary strategies to navigate gentrification pressures. These include spatial adaptation through repurposed industrial buildings, value chain integration combining production with retail and design, and the recontextualization of traditional manufacturing knowledge within contemporary cultural economies. The chapter contributes to urban industrial resilience theories by documenting how cultural manufacturing creates hybrid spaces that blur distinctions between production and consumption. The Seongsu case demonstrates that with appropriate spatial conditions and adaptive strategies, manufacturing can evolve rather than disappear from urban cores, challenging simplistic post-industrial narratives and informing more nuanced approaches to urban industrial preservation. © 2026 selection and editorial matter, Carl Grodach and Jessica Ferm; individual chapters, the contributors.