By the way, I first thought of Dresden (another post-war city) when I first arrived here and saw all the apartment blocks.

There is nothing interesting about that unless one likes trash. You should try another city other than Seoul with some sense of aesthetics like Athens, Prague or Pest and compare to understand what I’m talking about (KAL flies to Prague now!). Even Tokyo is cleaner than most any place in Seoul and their streets have a more refined sense of style, albeit Japanese.

I dunno, FWIW, all the advertising and sidewalk life everywhere is part of what gives the city (and Daegu too, where I spend a lot of time) their appeal to me. I know it goes against all aesthetic and good urban design principles, but without all that, these cities would be just that much more boring to me.

very nice apartment buildings

Bzzzert! Sorry, those two pairs of words don’t go together. Whatever they may look like inside, they’re butt-ugly outside, and the view you get from such an appartment is in 99% of cases appalling. And of course they don’t help with the overcrowding. People should stop thinking in terms of space wasted. There’s lots of space available – outside Seoul…

space not occupied by the buildings themselves generally seems to be paved over for parking

and

In any case it’s exasperating that so much space has to be wasted for parking in a city that is clearly much too dense for so many cars

… and too many people too…

Stack up vertically 10,000 people in an area that could/should not have more than a few hundreds and you have a huge parking problem, with 1.5 cars per household.

OTOH, THIS is a proper use of space…

New laws on public advertising would help tremendously as well. A ban on banners, loan-shark stickers, internet provider advertisements, etc. would go a long way in cleaning up the city.

Reclaiming sidewalk space should be enforced. In Athens (Greece), the city fines businesses that set up displays and tables outside of their business. They let restaurants put out tables but also impose a fee, which goes into running the city. Our current presidential-wanna-be mayor built a stream (ditch) in the city but does not have the smarts to keep the trash out of it or to clean up anything. More is the pity.

Regarding the parking, why aren’t there more underground parkades in these complexes? It would seem to be a simple space-saving solution—a few buildings have them—and I don’t know of any issue with soil conditions in most parts of Seoul or elsewhere that would prevent the construction of underground parkades….

I’ve linked here a google image search in which you can clearly see how much Korea’s apartment complexes resemble those in communist countries. If anything, the apartments in the former East Germany are better than the ones in Seoul because they do not have the parking lots nor corporate advertisements on the side.

I wish I could be more sanguine about the aesthetic issue, but the jaw dropping ugliness of the built environment in Korea is IMO, a major factor shaping negative perceptions towards the country. People are much more forgiving towards rude people and surly service if they have at least some attractive buildings and monuments to look at.

As an aside, lots of people think that the older places in Ichon-dong - like 신동아 - are nice. Many have remodelled interiors, plus the neighbors are often quite good. Who knows - Robert might be getting a new hit on his blog from that area starting in May.