Seongsu, before and after it became cool

The first time I walked through Seongsu-dong it was mostly red-brick shoe workshops and car repair shops, with the odd café squeezed between them. It felt like a neighbourhood that still worked for a living. My last visit, it was this:

Same red brick, same narrow streets, but now it is coffee roasters, boutiques and queues for pop-up stores. The Korea Times called it the Brooklyn of Seoul, which is exactly the kind of nickname that ends a neighbourhood if nobody is careful. So I was glad to read that Seongdong District is expanding its ban on new big corporate chains to Bangsongdae Street and parts of Yeomujang Street from December. It covers standard restaurants, cafés and bakeries, 232 land parcels in total, and on 82 of them new buildings will have to keep red-brick facades. Small franchises and chains approved by a resident committee can still come in, and the district will run its own pop-up spaces and check things weekly. The reason is what happened to Garosu-gil and Samcheong-dong. Rents go up, the small shops that made the place interesting move out, and in the end you have the same five brands you could find at any station. Munich has its own version of this story and the old shops rarely come back once they leave. I don't know if rules can really hold back rent. But I would rather they try now than write sad articles about Seongsu in ten years.