Seoul plans to provide 80,000 public housing units in underutilized spaces

An architectural image of the public housing project that Seoul plans on building atop the Northern Trunk Road. (provided by the Seoul Metropolitan Government)

Critics observe poor living environment of designated spaces

On Dec. 26, the city of Seoul announced a plan to provide 80,000 units of public housing in underutilized spaces throughout the city, including above the roads, on traffic islands and in rainwater pumping stations. While this plan is being praised for aiming to provide public housing downtown without damaging the city’s greenbelt, some are concerned that noise pollution and dust would create a poor housing environment for houses built above the roads.

On Wednesday, Seoul released the details of a plan to add 80,000 units of public housing and unveiled five innovative approaches to providing housing. This implies that the city plans to create 50,000 units on its own in addition to the approximately 30,000 units of downtown public housing that the government promised in the first and seconds rounds of its plan to expand the housing supply in the capital region, which were released back in September and then on Dec. 19.

The striking feature of these plans is the ways in which public housing would be supplied. First, Seoul announced that it would build 1,000 units of public housing above a 500m stretch of the Northern Trunk Road (between the Shinnae and Jungrang junctions). Inspired by “Réinventer Paris” (Reinventing Paris), this plan envisions creating “artificial land” above a busy road and then building houses and infrastructure on top of that.

Worries about the safety of building atop an artificial foundation were dismissed by experts, who agreed that this is an established method of construction that poses no major technical issues.

“There are many examples of this outside the country, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this on a technical level. It can certainly be made safe,” said Lee Su-gon, a civil engineering professor at the University of Seoul.

“Not only has this technology already been demonstrated, but it also has the advantage of being an affordable way of providing public housing, since it doesn’t require purchasing land from the private sector,” said Kim Hyeon-su, a professor of city planning and real estate at Dankook University.

Park Chang-geun, a professor of civil engineering at Catholic Kwandong University, agreed: “It’s completely possible to build a platform on which buildings can be safely erected through the techniques of civil engineering.”

An architectural image of the public housing project that Seoul plans on building on a traffic island in the Yeonhui neighborhood at the end of the Gyeongui Line Forest Path. (provided by the Seoul Metropolitan Government)

Issue of noise and exhaust pollution

That still leaves concerns about the noise and exhaust produced by traffic on the Northern Trunk Road, which would lie directly below the proposed public housing, as well as the surrounding residential environment.

“When parks are built and other amenities appear, the noise pollution could actually dissipate,” said Ryu Hun, chief of Seoul’s Housing and Architecture Bureau. “Tokyo in Japan as well as European countries such as the Netherlands and Germany are also building [housing] above the roads.”

Though this would be the first such attempt in South Korea, the technique has been frequently applied in other countries.

Some of the best known examples of this type of housing are the “floating village” above the ring road in Paris’s 17th arrondissement, the TKP Gate Tower Building in Osaka and the Schlangen apartment in Berlin.

Seoul is also planning to build 600 units of public housing and amenities on a traffic island in the Yeonhui neighborhood at the end of the Gyeongui Line Forest Path and above the rainwater pumping station in the Jeungsan neighborhood. A traffic island is a facility or plot of land installed at a road junction that serves to protect cars and pedestrians. The traffic island in the Yeonhui neighborhood is an unused hill near the Inner Ring Road that could support a building, Seoul says.

Along with this, the city is planning to provide a total of 80,000 units of public housing by 2020 by acquiring public land and idle lots and by temporarily raising the maximum floor area ratio for commercial and semi-residential land for three years.

On a related topic, Seoul mayor Park Won-soon expressed his regret that the city of Seoul had been identified as the primary culprit in the recent rise of housing prices in the capital region and emphasized the government’s role.

“Seoul’s housing supply was expanded, but the percentage of people who own their own house actually fell from 51.3% in 2010 to 48.3% last year. The city of Seoul has a lot of work to do in supplying public rental apartments, but the government is responsible for reclaiming the profits from real estate speculation,” Park said.

By Chai Yoon-tae, staff reporter

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