Territorialized urban mega-projects beyond global convergence: The case of Dongdaemun Design Plaza & Park Project, Seoul

• I examine the formative process of the Dongdaemun Design Plaza & Park Project from a multi-scalar approach.
• Local actors are significant to promote an urban mega-project (UMP).
• The others are marginalized from the creation of an UMP.

This paper examines the formative process of an urban mega-project (UMP) in Seoul from a multi-scalar perspective. In particular, the paper attempts to reveal the importance of local actors in the UMP’s development by analyzing the dynamic and contested interactions among diverse actors and processes occurring at multiple geographical scales. More specifically, by focusing on the “Dongdaemun Design Plaza and Park Project”, this paper focuses on the following questions. First, who are the important actors that have affected the formative process of the Seoul UMP? Second, how and through what type of processes have these actors affected the UMP’s development? The empirical case study will reveal that the formative processes of the Seoul UMP are the product (what I term the “territorialized urban mega-project”) of highly complicated and dynamic political interactions among diverse actors at multiple scales.