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Today, I want to talk about 'Sharing City'.
As you can see, I used to be a handsome fellow.
The most important part of this photo is actually my hair. I used to have lots of it back then.
But since then, I've been worrying day and night about various problems of our generation, and my hair has suffered as a result.
When I was 15, I took a 12-hour-long ride on a train to get to Seoul.
But there was no one to welcome me in Seoul.
I had to stay in a cramped study room and basically had to live there.
I didn't even have a bed.
So I always slept on top of my desk with my arms crossed like this, or lined up some chairs as a makeshift bed.
Of course, there was no place to wash properly.
Once I wore the same socks for three months.
It became so dirty and greasy that it actually became a kind of second layer of my skin, and then it didn't even smell that bad anymore.
Despite these difficulties, I studied hard, finished school, and now, ladies and gentlemen, I stand in front of you as the Mayor of Seoul.
I do not want you, the so-called 'scarred-youth' to be discouraged by difficulties in your lives.
They cannot and will not deter us from achieving our dreams.
Over the past several decades, it wasn't just a couple of people who decided to move to Seoul in search of better life.
Literally thousands of people flocked to the big city, their hearts full of big dreams.
Seoul now boasts a population of more than 10 million. The city grew tremendously.
However, despite the huge growth, at the same time now we are faced with so many, perhaps too many, city problems.
As you know, we have challenges arising from ever sector of society; lack of transportation and residence,
increasing suicide rates, crimes and violence, and the wealth gap of 99% vs. 1% that's ever growing...
We still have on our hands these numerous problems that worry us.
Yet, it this city, we dream together and tackle these tasks together as a team.
Looking back on history, nations have always worked to bolster people's patriotism and threaten those very lives in wars.
But cities, on the other hand, have always faithfully provided services to the people
-supplying clean water through waterways, public transportation through buses and subways, cleaning up the garbage in the streets, etc.
Now I want you to give me an honest answer. Is the Mayor of Seoul alright?
But it's not just me, the Mayor of Seoul, who's doing this job. All the other mayors around the world face similar concerns everyday.
Every morning I wake up and I'm thankful for another peaceful day in our city.
I get out of bed hoping there were no big accidents during the night and the subways are running smoothly.
One careful step after another is how I deal with the issues and problems that I face on a daily basis.
In a book titled Triumph of the City, the author Edward Glaeser, an economics professor at Harvard University,
writes that cities are humanity's greatest invention.
Cities pose great problems, but at the same time, cities have great potential to solve those problems.
Ladies and gentlemen, but I am still deeply troubled. Look how dry and rough my skin has gotten from all the worrying.
My poor little heart is burdened with Seoul city's $19B debt. Everyday, $2.1B is paid just for the interest.
How can I get my beauty sleep with that over my head?
But every single day, I get petitions from all kinds of people I meet,
and they want me to build new roads and youth center and other things like that.
So I always try to think - is there a way to accomplish these tasks without spending too much money?
I've completely transformed into a miser,
and I've been wrecking my brain to figure out a creative way to save money and solve out city's problems.
I always believe opportunities are found in times of crisis,
since crises cause us to come up with a creative solution, a different path which no one has yet treaded;
the third option beyond the classic dichotomy.
I have always carried this positive attitude in my life.
So I eventually came up with the concept of sharing.
Everybody gets a little possessive, wanting to have everything to his or herself.
But it's when you decide to share that you truly begin to own everything.
I've always seen it this way. When you share little, you gain little; when you share a lot, you gain a lot.
But when you give up possessing, that's when you gain everything.
It might sound ridiculous, but it is, in fact, absolutely true. I urge you to try it.
As you all know, I once was a lawyer and then a prosecutor, which are both small powers.
But I have given up those occupations, and all the money that I have earned through those jobs. I started to share my life.
Of course, in actuality it was my wife who supported me when I began sharing my life with others.
I think she now seems to regret it a little. But that's how she gained Seoul - along with all its troubles and worries.
That is how sharing becomes the prerequisite and the basis for solving problems.
You might not be familiar with these terms, but 'cooperative consumption' means sharing, exchanging, renting, and other functions
that empowers a Sharing Economy, thus allowing Sharing City to take place.
In other words, it means getting the most profit out from the smallest input. This is how you grow bigger.
Let’s take residential parking permit system for instance.
When you get this permit at your district office, you can park your car at a relatively cheap price.
A lot of parking spots are actually empty.
Once you go to work in the morning, your designated parking space near your house is empty for the whole day.
So if you tell other people hey, my parking space will be vacant from 9 in the morning till 7 in the evening,
people that work near your area can make use of this empty parking lot.
Are you rendered speechless at this discovery?
So if a mere 10 percent of those who signed up for the residential parking permit system decide to share,
we will instantly get free parking spaces for 3,725 cars.
People make pleas and petitions asking me for more parking spaces.
Yet, if we put sharing into practice,
we can enjoy the effects of having several new parking spaces without having to actually build new parking lots.
Last year, 9.8 million tourists visited South Korea. 1.5 million Japanese tourists couldn’t come due to shortage of hotels.
We lack approximately 15,000 hotel rooms in Korea, especially in Seoul.
So how can we solve this?
The answer is B&B ? Bed and Breakfast run by locals. If we were to share unused rooms, this is what happens.
If 1,000 households start providing B&B service, we yield the same effect as building 20 hotels with 50 rooms.
If 5,000 households participate, the effect would increase five times, yielding the same effect as building 100 little hotels.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is not all.
This room that we are using right now is unoccupied in the evening, as most public spaces usually become unoccupied in the evening.
Why waste this space?
I asked all the district offices to register all the vacant public spaces in Seoul.
Yet not a single space was registered. When I said I’d give incentives for registering, about 500 public spaces signed up.
If you need a conference room for your study groups,
you can sign up online today and use one of the five hundred public spaces at a very low price in your area.
If 500 auditoriums and conference rooms are shared for instance,
it has the same effect as building 25 community centers that have 10 auditoriums and conference rooms respectively.
The budget set aside for sharing program for 2013, next year, is 1.6 billion won. But we expect the results to be worth of 167.4 B.
Thus, I made a public announcement recently on that we will actively experiment and realize Shared City in Seoul.
In fact, ladies and gentlemen, when we look at the vast number of population moving into cities,
it shows that cities are meant to be a platform of sharing.
On the global level, more than half of the world’s population migrated from the rural areas to the cities.
Living in these densely populated cities, means that cities are the golden foundation for conducting experiments on how to share.
It’s fortunate Seoul City has such a huge debt, right?
Ladies and gentlemen, I personally believe that Seoul is on the verge of crossing the threshold into a historical moment.
Since the 1960s, the human greed to possess more capitals, resources and automobiles drove the economic development of Seoul.
But from 2012 after my inauguration as the Mayor of Seoul,
I believe that Seoul City is on the verge of advancing into a completely new world.
A world where humans are valued more than capitals, where pedestrians are valued more than cars,
where the quality of life and happiness is valued more than economic development and growth.
Up till now, presidents and politicians only pledged to increase our GDP and GNP, increase national income by $20,000/yr.
I will not make pledges of that kind.
Instead, I will say I want Seoul to be a city where our citizens can live more happily,
a safer city with less violence in schools and less *** abuses, where neighbors can share warm greetings.
A city where our memories live within it, just like Professor Cho mentioned before
and a city that the spirits of our parents can visit us without getting lost.
I am pretty sure that this is what you also want Seoul to be. Am I right?
It costs around several hundred billion won to build new infrastructures of the city. Subways are enormously expansive.
But I am sure that we can solve these problems not by building more hardware, but by transforming the social system.
The reason for rush hours and clogged up subways is because all corporates and firms start their office hours at nine.
But we can save up to $10~20B just by adjusting the working hours.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I think changing the software can solve a lot of problems in our society.
Please, don’t be greedy. I lost my own house, but I don’t starve to death, nor do I sleep on the streets.
When we cooperate and share, by giving up the greed that we have, we can make Seoul a better place.
Seoul has been selected as the best IT city for six consecutive years. The world’s best city of IT and infrastructure is Seoul.
Why? Because we’re living so close together, we don’t have to invest a lot to give everyone an ease access to Wi-Fi and the Internet.
Like so, we being compact can be an advantage.
We have cultural roots and genes for sharing, deeply ingrained within ourselves.
When I was a child, it wasn’t just my parents who brought me up. The grandma next door. The mister across the street.
When we were out playing with our friends, the friend’s mother tells us "Hey, come and eat your dinner here!"
Then after dinner, “Hey, just sleep here.” So I shout across the street to my mom.“Hey mom, I’m sleeping at my friend’s house!”
This is why Gandhi said that it takes a whole village to raise a child.
Kids these days, they only study day and night.
They may be full of knowledge and facts, but they don’t know how to form relationships with others.
What we truly need today are the values of sharing and understanding.
I am sure that even now, our city and the sharing system are developing and evolving.
I have just merely declared that from this point on, the city is taking a U-turn.
Our city is already changing; residential parking permit system, car sharing, sharing bikes, clothes and books.
Today, a small corporation named ‘Open Closet’ has been launched. I donated some of my clothes.
They took three suits which I wore during my mayor election campaign because they’re supposedly 'lucky'.
Sharing things like this is necessary. Why do we need to have tools like plane for woodworking and screwdrivers at every house?
Why can’t we just have one tool box for one block of residence?
Why do we need to have bookshelves at every house?
Can’t we just have one community library where kids will be able to read and play together?
Parents could communicate more, talking to each other about their childcare while the kids play and study together.
and this will have an enormous economic effect.
Not only the public data will be shared, but Seoul as a city will be stripped bare.
Ladies and gentlemen, the event we are holding today is City2.0, organized by TEDxSinchon.
This event is where we can gain much from sharing our city experiences.
Knowledge can now be shared beyond boarders globally and the amount of knowledge that could be shared is enormous.
Talents can also be shared. About half of America’s adult population is known to be involved in volunteer work,
generating the same effect as having five million workers employed at all times.
Human lives can also be shared.
Most of the people around my age, people in their fifties, have retired and are idly passing their time
But they are those who brought the ‘Miracle of the Han River’ to success, who have valuable experiences.
By fully utilizing these human resources, we can solve many problems that our children face today.
We can share every single piece of our life ranging from food, childcare, and culture ? to all sectors of our lifestyle.
Wisdom can be shared. Experience can be shared. Everything can be shared.
History can also be shared.
Folks, I have heard about the ancient walls of Seoul, Hanyang Dohsung. This is an amazing piece of Korean history we have here.
When we share the past, sharing the future is also made possible.
Even the processes of determining regulations and budget can be shared with citizens.
We have $50B allocated to public participation.
I personally share every little thing about the administrative process through my twitter account.
I have about 6,000,000 followers on twitter right now.
By digitally sharing the information with the citizens, almost in real time, I might have put too much burden on the public officials.
Oh, seems like we are running out of time.
It is about time for citizens’ active participation and cooperation. You are the owner of our city, Seoul.
Ladies and gentlemen, who is the mayor of our city? It is not me, but you.
I would like to end my speech by making a special introduction of our mayors for the day.
Would you like to come up for a minute? Yes, Miss Na-hyun and Mr. Jun-ho.
These two elementary school students are serving as the Mayor of Seoul for today.
Na-hyun says that her dream is to become the Mayor of Seoul.
Looks like I’m going to have steep competition in the future.
You are not going to run for candidacy while I’m still in office, are you?
Oh, was it a tough question? Looks like she’s having trouble making up her mind.
Ladies and gentlemen, please give them a warm round of applause. Thank you.