Maybe the “grand canal” really is a big theme park ride after all.
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14 Comments
Sounds like Mickey Mouse planning.
Ugh. This is sickening. Land is sparse in Korea. Korea doesn’t need any more theme parks that will only use up valuable land space.
Land is actually not that sparse. The problem Korea has is too many restrictions on what purposes to which the existing owners can put land. There are rather unrealistic building-height, setback, and density rules applicable in the city center (why, again, are Korean apartment blocks usually 12-19 storeys when Hong Kong apartment blocks are so often 30-50 storeys?), especially in the Central Business District — while fringe areas are often designated “greenbelt” or “agricultural” use, prohibiting development for productive uses.
We have a combination of actual shortage and artificial shortage imposed by the government. Want to improve the lives of the people and control housing price increases? Deregulate, baby.
The good news is, the Bulldozer has already publicly stated the correct view on these issues. Assuming he can bulldoze a real deregulatory scheme through the National Assembly (somehow, I expect this new “business-friendly” crew still has the usual unhealthy proportion of rent-seekers, and so the deregulation may be less dramatic than hoped-for), we will see a wave of better buildings in Seoul and possibly the increase in housing prices will be moderated.
As a homeowner, however, I surely do not want them to come down.
Do you really want to see 30-50-story tombstone apartment buildings in Seoul? As it is, when large areas are rebuilt with “tombstones”, the neighborhood is effectively dead since there is little or no sense of humanity therein, little multipurpose building of different scale unless one walks *out* of the tombstone-designated area.
IMHO, having a Seoul, more like Hong Kong, would be a cultural disaster. The telephone poles are already looking more like Hong Kong’s except they are not sagging and collapsing under the weight of too many lines — yet.
Not tombstones, but yes — we need to build a lot taller in Seoul. The tombstone apartments are a direct response to edicts the government made from the 1970s to very recently about how to build a “good” apartment. And those edicts were wrong, and still are wrong in many ways.
Sure, but that’s a failure of regulation. The answer is not more regulation. Hong Kong’s humanity comes from the fact that the first two-to-four levels of any residential property near a thoroughfare tends to be occupied by commercial uses. I also think Korea could learn a lot from Singapore in this regard — hell, even Jakarta!
They need an Andre Kim theme park
Thanks for the additional thoughts Brendon — it helps me at least.
I wonder just how large these parks would be and what their impact would be upon the surrounding areas. I wonder if this is really the best way to bring in economic benefits to these areas.
Having more large-scale, corporate theme parks than most any other place in the world will not encourage tourism either. Would I trust a Korean third-party to evaluate the impact and benefits of these ventures upon the locale?
No, not really.
30-50-story apartment buildings in Seoul? Not a good idea. It will attract even more people into Seoul and even worse traffic congestion.
Wholesale change has to occur before you can attract people to come to Korea. As long as the Koreans have the “Kill my neighbor’s pig” attitude, people will not come.
There is nothing that would make Korean people want to live anywhere other than Seoul.
I am not in favor of government regulation compelling people to live in Seoul, nor am I all that pleased with efforts to force them out of Seoul. They’ll live where they want to live.
Given that everyone seems to want to live in Kangnam, I say let ‘em. Let ‘em live on the 90th floor.
That’s why the government should make a continuous effort to make regional cities more attractive places to live in, instead of artificially forcing them to do so. I think one relatively easy way might be to make international airlines to use Busan, Daegu or Gwanju more, rather than most of them using Inchon as they do now.
#4, never underestimate the power of Ajummas. I doubt higher density will ever stop them from forming tight-knit communities sharing information on their family’s welfare and collectively addressing issues related to their family’s welfare.
“Cydevil”, I am referring to the psychological affect of what happens if one tears down a multiple-scale neighborhood and replaces this with monolithic concrete structures. It is very cold and sterile and nullifies what makes one place unique as compared to another. Take a walk through Pundang and compare this to a real neighborhood in Seoul that does not have large areas of “tombstones”.
#10 “There is nothing that would make Korean people want to live anywhere other than Seoul.”
I love the little shop down the street from my house. A really nice Korean family owns it. I asked the father if he missed living in Korea, and he did. I asked him why he left and he told me that Seoul was too crowded and he couldn’t find work there. He loves his country but left because Seoul was too crowded and there was no work for him.
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[...] to this article, found by R. Elgin on The Marmot’s Hole, not only was that rumor true, other parks are in the works from [...]