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[UN]Precedented Pyongyang

by Dongwoo Yim, edited with Jelena Prokopljevic and Rafael Luna (Actar Publishers)

It’s a rarity in urban planning to have such a clear case study of a large modern city built to a particular principle. But the devastation wrought on North Korea during the 1950–53 war, when all of its cities were levelled, gave its citizens a tabula rasa for their capital, which they rebuilt based on a socialist model.

This work draws together the threads of this development, interpreting the urban fabric through its physical structure (‘the most neutral lens’), providing demographic information, maps and data-driven comparisons with other cities as it delves into past, present and future, fulfilling author Yim’s vision of the architect as ‘historian and futurist at the same time’. As Yim argues, the city’s trajectory does not mirror other post-socialist cities transitioning after the Cold War; while even