The Foreword of Korean Association of the Bio-Technological Landscape Urbanist

City is our life itself. It is the only habitat of the humankind and is the symbol of civilization at the same time. Urbanization, which has accelerated since the time of industrial society, is making the world not as an aggregate of nations but as an aggregate of cities. By 2025, around 60% of the global population will live in cities. Currently 93% of the population in Korea are living in cities. The world is now a city(World=City). This is a time where the competitiveness of cities is the competitiveness of the nation.

However, city is an agent which harms the system of natural circulation in all organisms, including human beings. The city has been characterized high entropy since long before. As can be seen in various social pathologies including the global climate change, exacerbation of biodiversity, and urban heat island, city has been established as an agent which provides harm as much as the good civilization. Moreover, the entry into a society characterized by low birth rate and aging population, which is working as a factor that makes cities deteriorated and hollow, is increasing the demand for comprehensive urban renewal.

After a period of industrialization, a society of information creation has now arrived. Like what Klaus Schwab said, a fourth industrial revolution has begun. The time for a paradigm shift has come. Along with the development and convergence of physics technology, digital technology, and biological technology, an era of biotechnology, which can recreate analogue nature into digital nature, is being opened. Possibility of a shocking change, where the city is not an aggregate of gray infrastructure anymore but is becoming a green landscape of bio-infrastructure, is happening. It is the possibility of creating a new urban civilization.

Cities should not be mere aggregates of simple buildings. They must be renewed and evolved to become landscapes of cultural infrastructure where natural forces come to life and take its breath. (Tentatively named) We seek to found the Korean Association of the Bio-Technological Landscape Urbanist with the vision of making an innovative urban landscape where culture of life is created and renewed through academic and technological convergence of various fields that deal with nature, such as landscape architecture, architecture, urban studies, civil engineering, nano-bioengineering, renewable energy, biomaterials, environmental art, and humanities. We ask you to take part in founding this association, which aims to produce and make communications on the discourse on strategies on creation, planning and design, management, technology, materials, programs, etc. for cultural urban landscape with bionatural technology, so please accept our request.