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A Design City Where Citizens Take Center Stage: “Future Busan Design Group Meetup Day” to Be Held

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Busan Metropolitan City (Mayor Park Heong-joon) announced that it will hold the “2026 Future Busan Design Group Meetup Day (Citizen-Participatory Communication Event)” at 2:00 p.m. today (the 23rd) in the Grand Auditorium on the first floor of City Hall, with the aim of spreading a citizen-participatory design culture and realizing the theme of “2028 World Design Capital (WDC) Busan.”

The theme of “2028 World Design Capital (WDC) Busan” is “Inclusive City, Engaged Design.”

The event has been organized to fully promote citizen-participatory public design projects that identify and solve everyday problems from the perspective of citizens.

With approximately 220 participants, including members of the Future Busan Design Group and neighborhood designers, the event will serve as a citizen-participatory communication forum where participants share the roles and future activities of the design group formed through direct citizen involvement, and exchange thoughts and opinions on urban issues encountered in daily life.

The program will proceed in the following order: opening and welcoming remarks, commemorative photo session, sharing of roles and tasks of the Future Busan Design Group, a World Design Capital (WDC) quiz event, an introduction to the 2026 annual activity plan, and an introduction to and participation event for the “Let’s Design Together” campaign.

In addition, future operational directions will be presented, including offline activities centered on on-site observation such as the “Busan Design Spot Tour,” helping participants better understand participatory activities in which citizens observe the city in their daily lives and propose ideas.

Busan Metropolitan City plans to gradually operate the Future Busan Design initiative as a series of field-oriented projects in order to build a city where everyone can empathize, participate together, and experience changes in daily life through design.

In the initial stage, separate design groups for children, youth, and seniors will conduct activities and share experiences and ideas from diverse perspectives. Subsequently, through on-site activities that involve directly exploring neighborhoods and urban spaces, inconveniences in daily life and urban issues will be identified, and tasks to address them will be derived.

The derived tasks will then be developed into feasible policies through the operation of design labs in collaboration with public officials and experts. An end-of-year performance report meeting is also planned to share and expand the outcomes of citizen-participatory public design.

Meanwhile, the Future Busan Design Group, launched after Busan was selected as the 2028 World Design Capital, is a citizen-participatory design group composed of five sectors: Kids Design Lab, Young Wave Design Group, Universal Design Group, Senior Design Group, and the World Design Capital (WDC) Promotion Group.

With participation spanning all generations from children to youth and seniors, the group plays a role in identifying and solving everyday problems from a design perspective. Beginning with activities in 2026, participation will be gradually expanded, and the initiative will continue through the 2028 World Design Capital year.

Mayor Park Heong-joon stated, “The true success of 2028 World Design Capital Busan will not lie in the event itself, but in how much citizens’ daily lives have changed afterward,” adding, “Through the activities of the Future Busan Design Group, I hope citizens and the administration will come together as one team to create a new standard for a design city, Busan.”