Dr. Jiyeon Park is a “space gardener” with expertise in international development, sustainable development and community development. Her interest in policy formulation tools that aim to improve the well-being and living standards of people led to a cross-disciplinary path in her studies: international relations, European studies, urban sociology and development studies focused on spatial planning as a tool of mediation/governance for sustainable development. Her work seeks to tailor guidance for the “harmonious development” through the elaboration of ‘community-based “endogenous development” by specialization’, with emphasis on the valorization of the specificity of the designated space and its inhabitants.

Dr. Park undertook a comparative study of French and South Korean innovation systems in the process of metropolitanization in terms of spatial planning and sustainable development (centered on French ‘intercommunality’ and Korean ‘Innovation city’). As a practical strategy that promotes participatory democracy and supports policy implementation, she schematized, the SI EEP(Système d’Innovation destiné à aménager un Ecosystème d’Echange et de Partage) seeking to ensure the dynamic engagement of all concerned actors, foster cooperation, solidarity and synergies with relevant local, regional or national initiatives, and sustain their co-work by developing -design, plan and manage- ‘action plans for the endogenous development’ (with a focus on the organization of capacity building activities at all levels).

She received her PhD in urban planning and regional/territorial development from Université de Strasbourg in 2016. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Freie Universität Berlin, and her research is dealing with the identification of development themes rooted in the 27 North Korean cities and the elaboration of most appropriate scenarios for its endogenous community development, as a practical approach to Korean Unification. Her research interests include the sociality of spaces, healing spaces, interterritorial solidarity, multi-level governance cooperation, rural-urban relationship, decentralization, and well-being and valorization of (the presence) of the population among others.