# SEOUL | Sinnae Compact City | Pro



## kimahrikku1 (Dec 24, 2012)

kimahrikku1 said:


> *Official announcement regarding the Sinnae Station development over the railroads ("Compact City")*
> More details have been announced for this project.
> 
> On this 500-meter long section of highway near Sinnae Station (Jungrang-gu), the city is planning to build over the road 1000 housing units, at a cost of over USD 400 million. The project's working name seems to be "Compact City".
> ...


Article from today's Korea TimesHerald:



> *As land prices soar, Seoul places its next public housing project on highway*
> 
> Seoul is running out of space for new public housing projects.
> For years, commercial real estate development has pushed up land prices in the city. Greater costs follow public projects that require buying and building on private land. In response, Seoul Housing & Communities Corp. (SH), Seoul's public housing builder, is eyeing what might be considered relatively "vacant" public land, such as bus garages and water treatment centers.
> ...



Architectural contest for the selection of the winning project has officially been announced, with a jury made of 9 experts. The contest will be held in two rounds, and a winner is expected to be selected by December.


http://news1.kr/articles/?3725533


http://www.m-i.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=640137


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## kimahrikku1 (Dec 24, 2012)

The winning project has been selected and announced today. It was submitted by the Posco A&C Architectural Consortium, and is entitled "Connection City".

Construction is still expected to begin in H2 2021 and be completed in 2024.

Overall, I can't say that I'm ecstatic about the selected project, but we'll have to see.





































http://www.etoday.co.kr/news/view/1846692


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## kimahrikku1 (Dec 24, 2012)

*Land usage plan approved, contractor to be selected in February 2022*

According to this new article, the revised timeline for the construction is as follows: the contractor will be selected in February 2021, and construction will begin a bit later in the first half of 2022. Completion is planned for 2025.









[단독]'도로위 도시' 신내컴팩트시티 지구계획 승인…내년 착공


신내4 컴팩트시티 위치도·조감도(사진 출처:SH공사)[이데일리 하지나 기자] 국내 첫 ‘도로위 도시’ 신내4 컴팩트시티 사업이 본격화될 전망이다. 사실상 관련 사업계획승인을 모두 끝마친 신내4 컴팩트시티는 내년 2월 시공사를 발주하고 상반기 착공에 들어갈 예정이다. 1...




www.edaily.co.kr


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## kimahrikku1 (Dec 24, 2012)

*Project likely to be abandoned or modified for safety reasons*

The plans to build a public housing complex partially on top of an existing highway near Sinnae Station are going to have to be heavily modified, or else they might get scrapped altogether.

The project was the brainchild of previous mayor Park Won-soon, and has been quite controversial, with critics ranging from the high costs, to safety issues, as well as the type of housing provided and the designs.

Well, it seems that it's back to the drawing board now. A study has revealed that there are significant safety concerns about the structural integrity of this structure, with fears that it could collapse. So the engineering would have to be modified. It's also suspected that Mayor Oh is opposed to this project, and has therefore pushed for this negative assessment.

Furthermore, another issue is that the complex was planned to include only small public housing (70% of the units with only 20sqm, and the remaining 30% at 42 to 53sqm). So the city is asking for a new proposal with more regular apartments, especially on the lower half of the project which is not over the highway.

We will see what happens, I wouldn't be surprised if this project is killed, with potentially only the southern part (not over the highway) developed as regular housing. I can't help to think that this is a clear example of yet another poor project of former Mayor Park. First of all, construction over roads is usually something which is done in only unique circumstances, which makes these kind of unavoidable, due to the need to connect parts of the city, or super high density, or something like that. Here, it did seem kind of random. Why suddenly, why at this location, why in this way? It's not an area which is terribly central or expensive or valuable, and there have been some housing supply in this area already with new towns there. It doesn't help connect parts of the city on either side, because there's already an agent small street passing underneath the highway, and because there's not a lot of natural traffic between both sides anyway. Structurally, this part of the highway is quite wide, with access ramps, and even a small tollgate on a ramp, so it's a wide road and for road safety, having this area become a tunnel is not best for visibility. Is the building complex structurally safe? Tough for us to say, and the new administration may have put its finger on the scale with an exaggeratedly negative review, but at least some of the concerns must have been legitimate.

As for the design, the design they picked wasn't really appealing to me (I had preferred other suggestions), and it looks quite like a council estate (UK) or HLM (France). The terraced park didn't look to bad, but certainly not good enough to become any sort of local attraction. Then you have the fact that the housing was almost exclusively small housing for single tenants. I certainly understand the need for public housing, but there should be more social mix and balance. I especially don't like small public housing. Sure you can build a bit more housing if you build smaller, but the demographic pressure in Korea isn't so high, and it's one of the few advanced economies in which it's still possible to supply a lot of new housing through new construction, so they could build more bigger public housing overall. Overall, countries should try to build the type of housing that they want for their citizens, rather than just build small housing and drive a wedge between good housing for well-off people that most can't afford, and poor tiny public housing which people don't want but can't avoid. Of course, I know that it's easier said than done, and that there's no perfect solution...

And then there's the fact that with the project made little use of the southern portion (south of the highway, on existing land). If there was such a dearth of housing in this area, you would imagine than on this southern portion, which is the easiest/cheaper to build on, would have at least as much density as the part over the highway itself. But on the previous plans, as you can see, there would have been the mid-rise buildings over the highway, slowly coming down to ground level on the southern portion. This Southern Portion has like 33,000sqm of area, you could pretty much build the amount of housing planned for this project by just building like 5 or 6 towers of 20 or 25 floors. It would have been much simpler, provided housing quicker, and would save the taxpayer a lot of money.

The project was also supposed to be connected to Sinnae Station (which is good), but the full project has initially envisioned would have also required building on top of the Jungnang Bus Depot (complicated and expensive as well), and required to relocation of the Sinnae Train Depot (which has been proposed, but which hasn't passed the feasibility study, because it's already in the outskirt of town and would only be relocated a couple of kms away, with the proposed extension to Line 6 not being really high on the priority list; so any relocation would take at least 15 years or so).

But this project, in addition to its specific shortcomings, shows the difference of policies between the previous and current city administrations. The first point is that the previous administration was focused more on public housing, especially for small households, while the new one wants to support more privately-led projects, mostly for larger households. The second point, and the most important, is that the previous administration was quite strongly against reconstruction and redevelopment, which led them to have supply housing in Seoul on only a few underdeveloped lands owned by the city (including on the more controversial ones like highways, bus depots, water reservoirs). On the other hand, the new administration favors reconstruction and redevelopment more, so it should already be able to supply more housing more easily it doesn't have anymore to resort to unconventional methods such as highways to supply such housing.

It doesn't necessarily mean that all such projects have to stop though. The projects to build housing on top of Gangil and Jangji Bus Depot do seem interesting to me, because the locations are great. We might eventually see some highways rebuilt underground and housing be built on top of them. So the basic idea isn't necessarily bad. But for the Sinnae Compact City, it just seems that it is not the right location, for the right type of project and the right type of housing.

We'll see how it goes, if they scrap the project entirely, keep it by just modifying the engineering and the type of housing, or only build on the southern half.


















[단독]국내 첫 '도로 위 아파트' 사실상 무산...'붕괴 위험' 지적 - 머니투데이


박원순 전 서울시장이 독일, 프랑스 등 해외 사례를 벤치마킹해서 국내 최초로 추진한 이른바 "도로 위 아파트" 프로젝트가 무산될 가능성이 높은 것으...




news.mt.co.kr


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