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Signals from Seoul – Future Clues in Everyday Life

  • Writer: horizonshiftlab
    horizonshiftlab
  • Aug 7
  • 9 min read
Futuristic cityscape with skyscrapers and digital billboards. Birds fly above buildings with green rooftops, under a clear blue sky.
Source: AI Generated Image

In this special summer edition of Horizon Shift Lab, Sue takes us on a real-world signals hunt through the vibrant city of Seoul, South Korea. As she explores everything from rooftop gardens to subterranean malls, she uncovers surprising and subtle clues about how the future is taking shape in urban environments. With a keen eye for emerging trends—from climate-responsive infrastructure to booming pet culture—this episode offers a refreshing, thought-provoking look at how societal shifts can be observed in the ordinary. Whether you're traveling or staying put, this episode will inspire you to become a future-spotter wherever you are.




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Episode Transcript:

Sue (00:00)

Hi everyone, it's been a while. This is Sue here. Welcome back to Signal Shift. And I'm here for the summer for a couple of lighthearted episodes as we go through some signal finding. And if you're on vacation right now, you know, it might be time to relax and unwind, get away from your daily grind, but also hopefully be up for new possibilities. That's what I wanted to talk about. Cause at Signal Shift, we do a lot of our work by looking at diverse news sources, reading and digging into reports and things like that. But also, as you know, we've done a couple of episodes of looking for signals in the real world. And that's what I wanted to cover. What does it look like to look for signals while you're traveling? And number one, you know, when I did this on a couple of my trips, it was really fun. It was kind of like a scavenger hunt, but not exactly. And number two was that it just invited different kinds of conversations with the people I was traveling with.


Also with people back home, beyond the kind of like, how'd you get there? What'd you eat? You know, what did you see? Stuff like that. So if you're traveling, I encourage you to look for some of these signs, see what you might pick up. And I'd be curious to see what kind of conversations that invites for you. And so, yeah, I'll be running through a couple of the trips in the next few episodes. And just a note here, you know, a lot of the


The signals I picked up, just captured a couple images and videos which I'll share. But hopefully if we do this again next summer, I could be like a field reporter. So we'll see. But for now, here we go.


Okay, so one city I wanted to take you to is Seoul, South Korea. And you know Seoul, Korea has been in the news a lot, whether it's for K-pop, K-dramas, food trends, and the latest in politics, for example. And I was really excited to look for signals in Seoul, because number one, it's been a city that we have covered a lot and found a lot of signals in our work over the last year. So I wanted to see how obvious is it once I got there.


And number two, it's a city I've been to multiple times over multiple decades. And to see the changes every time I go has been really exciting, but even more so now that I'm looking for some of these future trends. And so I just wanted to share a few. I did find a lot, some a little bit more esoteric, but just hard to grasp than others and just required a lot more research. So I'll just start with a couple of lighthearted ones that gave me food for thought and was just, uplifting in terms of imagining a future. So yeah, so the first one is not too surprising, I would say, just given global trends, but that was pet culture. And I saw so many more people out with pets, especially small dogs than I'd seen in previous trips. And they were out and about wearing really cool fashion. They were out and about in pet strollers. And it got to the point where by the end, if we had guessed if there was a baby or a pet, a lot of times it was a pet


And, you know, in our day-to-day, we would pass by boutiques selling dog clothing. We had places that sold pet strollers. We even passed by what I think is like a high-end vet clinic offering specialized services like dermatology. And, you know, it tracks what we had been seeing in the news lately, and it continues a long, I guess a long-term trend now where one in four families in Korea now own a pet.


Pet insurance market is starting to boom. two fun news pieces. One is that a recent report showed that vets had the largest salary increase of all professions last year. And the largest tour operator in Korea is now offering a travel package to Vietnam offering pet owners and their pets a five-star travel service from hotels, amenities, photo opportunities, you name it. So really curious to see how quickly that has sold out and what will be in the future. The other side of the coin is just food for thought that we saw in the news. I think we covered it, right? That last year, the number of pet strollers outsold the number of baby strollers for the first time in Korea. We often hear about Korea's falling fertility rate.


Sensational because when I was there, there were plenty of people with children out and about, and people were really kind to them. So I do love that part about the culture. I hope with the recent changes to promote an increasing birth rate, we'll see how that goes. But this is definitely a question for the future. What does it look like? Also for the pet industry, too.


So that was food for thought. And the next signal also brought in a couple of themes that we had before, which was third spaces, combating climate change and the reinvention of malls. So I don't know how, like, I feel like every trip I've been to in Seoul, I've been to a mall, it's kind of hard to avoid. They're attached to subway systems, for example. They're everywhere. And you have the large established malls like Lotte or Shinsegae.


But you also have night markets, have, yeah, you have subterranean malls as well. And, I've always gone, obviously, to go shopping, or there might be a specific eatery I want to go to. But this time I observed a couple of new different things. One is that while I was there, there were several poor air quality days where you could really feel it in the air and it wasn't too nice to be outside. So we did wind up going to the mall to spend the day. at least one of the malls we went to was quite prepared. So Coex is a very large mall in Gangnam. And they're known for, I think on Instagram especially, Starfield Library, which of course we had to go to. But beyond that, they had a lot of public amenities that I really appreciated. one was just that I noticed more air purifiers in the hallway or in the corridors. There were also places that were selling a lot of air purifiers to people. There was a track painted in an area for people to get some exercise. And there were just street signs as you would navigate street signs outside. The other thing that was interesting was you couldn't really tell if it was night or day in some of the places. And we went late at night.


It just felt like it was during the day. There were so many people out and about shopping and eating and all sorts of people, whether it was families with young kids, the elderly, people with dogs, tourists, et cetera. so, yeah, thought given the loneliness epidemic in Korea, that felt uplifting to me. I saw later that there is programming for more specialized populations like senior citizens that are held there.


You know, is the mall another place where you could really create intentional programming to bring more people together? And for me, I guess the flip side of it was, yeah, I was really appreciative. There was a place to go on a really poor air quality day. I wasn't stuck in a hotel. But, you know, does that mean we're going to just increasingly spend more and more days inside? And Seoul is such an enjoyable city to walk around when you do have a clear day. I would just hate to know that that's that stops, you know? So personally, I was happy to know that we could still have a great, enjoyable day in the city. It's also helpful and hopeful to know that this is a place where more people could congregate in the future. So let's see, will more malls be like this? Will more malls be safe and clean and have a place for people to go in the future? So we'll see.


Okay, so some of the more like uplifting signals I found was one was I Found that there were trees and gardens everywhere, but it wasn't obvious right like you just walked down the street and Seoul is a city that built up You can't really see the sky in some of the places certainly we couldn't where we were staying you really really had to like look up at a sliver But when you're out in the street, you start looking up and you see tree scapes on all the rooftops which I thought was really fascinating. Like you look up to go see the garden. And I am not an architect, but what I did learn was, you know, there is a concept called the fifth facade where you integrate roof design into the structure. And so I know that I'll link to something that shows how Korea is using some of this concept. And I learned beyond that, you know, when I got home that actually,


Increasing gardens and treescapes in Korea or in Seoul specifically has been a multi-year effort by the city to create a botanical garden city. And their goal is to create a garden that's within a five minutes walking distance from everyone's home. The current administration, I think built over 500 gardens last year is on track to create another 500 this year with the goal of having more than a thousand new gardens by 2026. And so, you know,


One of the efforts, a couple of the reasons that they have this is to combat climate change to really lower the temperature of the city. And the other is to also help combat the loneliness epidemic. They did cite studies that showed that mental health increased when you were out in public, in gardens, and also to help create job opportunities with educational programs, helping people become docents, gardeners, et cetera, and more.


So I found this super uplifting. I've seen so many Korean movies where there's, you know, post-apocalypse like desert, things like that, just barren land. And this imagines a city that's different, that's so vibrant, that incorporates a dense urban forest among their cityscape. And so I hope the next time I go see Korea, there's just a lot more greenery everywhere in really creative ways.


Maybe there's more, just more things that are wild that live among the people. I know that's kind of crazy, but it would be really great to see. yeah, so trees and gardenscapes. And then the last one actually hearkens back to the sustainable travel episode we did this time last year when we talked about the possibility of a blue visa where maybe tourists could be incentivized to act more sustainably around the cities that they're visiting with maybe discounts or advantages to go to different institutions. And this isn't exactly that, but what I did find was that Seoul last year introduced a climate card for tourists. And they introduced it to residents first, which is a monthly card, unlimited transit access, which I think they've kind of expanded since then. due to its popularity, they launched one for tourists too. That's a shorter term stay.


It also includes access to different sites around the city, things like that. People love it so much, actually especially locals, that they voted it the number one popular policy last year by the government. And they had over 10 million users recharge their cards, for example. So, you know, in the future, I wonder, could they even do more with it? I think they're initiating something new to include discounts for families with young children, for the elderly or for households that are of a certain low income. very, very interesting. I would love to see more done later where it is maybe educating tourists and residents around some of their sustainability practices, maybe promoting sustainable businesses, something like that. So we'll see where it goes. But that was also uplifting to see just the invention of it and the popularity of it by, especially by its locals and hopefully also by the tourists too. So that's it.


So next week we'll go on to the next trip. But if you're traveling right now and listening to this, I hope you're also looking with some eyes towards the future and finding some new things for the city and imagining what it might be like in the next 10 years. So thanks again and we will see you next week.


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