As Seoul?s population boomed, apartment blocks became commonplace. Photographer Manuel Alvarez Diestro spent 6 months exploring the city?s new towns, aiming to ?reveal in visual terms the expansive nature of urbanization and the transformation of the landscape through the construction of these new housing developments of massive scale.?

© Manuel Alvarez Diestro

As Seoul?s population boomed, apartment blocks became commonplace. Photographer Manuel Alvarez Diestro spent 6 months exploring the city?s new towns, aiming to ?reveal in visual terms the expansive nature of urbanization and the transformation of the landscape through the construction of these new housing developments of massive scale.?
© Manuel Alvarez Diestro

After liberation from Japanese rule in 1945, people migrated to Seoul from all parts of the country. City officials were unprepared to deal with such rapid expansion and urban squatter settlements developed next to the city?s four gates. It wasn?t until the mid-1960s that authorities cleared urban slums and developed a coherent city plan that featured 21 medium-density self-contained communities just outside the city limits.

© Manuel Alvarez Diestro

Soon enough, the sprawling new towns merged, with ever more dwellings needed. Seoul?s authorities revised the 1966 plan and the first high-rise buildings mushroomed south of the Han River. Nowadays, ...