The Reason Wanju Began the Cultural City Project

Wanju-gun is a county-level basic local government, but it ranks fifth (5.1%) in the proportion to the population of 14 cities and counties in Jeollabuk-do after Jeonju, Gunsan, Iksan, and Jeongeup, larger than Namwon and Gimje. In particular, it is also a region where the population has increased, which is rare for a county-level region. The main factor in its population growth is due to social growth based on the rapid influx of outsiders rather than natural growth such as an increase in the birth rate. This is likely to be a source of tension and conflict-causing factors that threaten the traditional community spirit that has been maintained in the community.In addition, Wanju-gun has rapidly urbanized owing to the expansion of adjacent Jeonju, the creation of Wanju-Jeonju Innovation City, and the expansion of Wanju Industrial Complex. Further, as the social movement of its population has increased, the background of its citizens is also diversifying.

Currently, about 400 social economic communities have been formed in Wanju-gun, and 10% of the population is engaged in economic activities based on these communities. A representative successful example of social economic community activities is the local food project. The local food project in Wanju-gun was selected as an excellent case by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and was successful enough to be a benchmarking case for many local governments. With the success of social economic communities such as the local food project, Wanju-gun's GRDP grows at an annual average of 9.7%, ranking first among the 14 cities and counties in Jeollabuk-do, and twice as high as Jeollabuk-do's average GRDP, generating considerable economic income for its citizens.

As the economic income of citizens has grown significantly, a qualitative leap in the cultural environment and sociocultural domain corresponding to this is becoming an important policy-level task. Due to these policy necessities, Wanju-gun set the vision and goal of urban development of "100,000 Wanju Era, the Topmost City to Open Together" and established three key policies (job, quality of life, and agricultural and rural). Among them, the "Quality of Life Making All Happy, Renaissance Wanju" strategy is being promoted as a policy related to the quality of life belonging to the sociocultural domain.

The cultural city project is closely related to the strategy of ‘Renaissance Wanju.’ The ‘Renaissance Wanju’ strategy is promoted based on various community activities in the region formed through community business projects, which is the highest form of competitiveness of Wanju-gun.In fact, it is true that local communities in Wanju-gun have focused more on income-oriented businesses that generate economic profits, but now they intend to expand their scope of activities to cultural areas that cultural environments suitable for economic growth levels and establish their own local cultural identities.

In order to achieve this goal step by step, Wanju-gun established its own visions and directions to develop itself into a cultural city, applied for a project to construct special cultural areas and was finally selected in 2017. Since 2018, proceeding with the project to construct special cultural areas, Wanju-gun prepared ‘Basic Design of Wanju Cultural City,’ the basic frame of the creation of a cultural city, for the designation and promotion of it based on the Local Culture Promotion Act. The ‘Basic Design of Wanju Cultural City’ sets a goal to make a new city brand with which Wanju realizes the value of the community cultural city by reorganizing the discourse on regional regeneration and culture and laying the foundation of a cultural city by itself, under the vision of ‘the community cultural city.’ Based on this design, it applied for the cultural city designation project in the second year of the process of the special cultural area project in 2019, and was selected as a prospective cultural city and began to carry out the project in 2020. 

In particular, Wanju began its plan to the cultural city project from 2017, and for about 24 months until the cultural city creation plan was finally approved in 2019, they met 9,876 citizens at 395 locations to listen to their opinions on cultural city creation projects and collect opinions on project directions, detailed tasks, and implementation projects. In this process, research and research projects involving a group of experts were also conducted in parallel. As a result, the cultural community and community culture that are most easily understood and recognized by the residents were set as the core values of the cultural city, and the vision was also set as ‘a community cultural city where lives change through shared culture’. The concept of a community expanded from a physical domain-centered community according to geographical and regional division, to a taste- and value- sharing community that shares interests, tastes, and value systems. The direction of specialization was also set as a culture of understanding each other, sharing, cooperation, and symbiosis, the base and effect of a community.

This vision and value system of Wanju Community Culture City is based on local experience and is easily understood and agreed on by its citizens, which has become an important factor in smoothly inducing cooperation and their participation in the process of establishing and implementing project plans or detailed tasks.The Wanju-gun Cultural City Project established the governance of the Wanju-type community cultural city based on the promotion system led by citizens as the substantial subject of the project.

Wanju-gun has been closely identifying local cultural sites and the detailed tasks of cultural projects from the process of designing cultural city projects, reviewing various roles and functions related to urban culture, and setting mid- to long- term prospects on how to share roles and cooperation in local innovative solutions.