# Why Seoul will be Seeing More Supertalls



## globill (Dec 4, 2005)

Seoul Office Space Running Short

By Jane Han
Staff Reporter

Last July, U.S. investment powerhouse Morgan Stanley paid a record price of $1 billion for a 23-story downtown Seoul office building. A big deal, but experts say it's only an example of similar transactions in the future and reflection of the robust local office space industry.

``Supply doesn't meet demand here,'' said Seoul associate director Chris Yoon at CB Richard Ellis (CBRE), a global commercial property and real estate services adviser. ``So naturally, prices have been taking a sharp upward trend.''

Over the past five years, overall office space prices have jumped 20-30 percent and continue to see about a 4-5 percent rise each year, said Yoon. But he added that vacancy rates are still the lowest-ever despite snowballing price tags.

A recent survey of 150 Seoul area buildings done by Kyobo Realco, a property management subsidiary of Kyobo Life, showed that the November vacancy rate stood at just below 0.5 percent.

Especially in the Gangnam district, annually, an average of just 1 percent of office space was empty, which is lower than the rate in New York (4 percent) and similar to those in London and Hong Kong.

The situation is clearly a sign of a commercial boom, says Yoon, attributing the growth not only to usage, but also to growing foreign investment.

Experts say foreign investors are seeing Asian property assets as attractive thanks to the stable returns they yield on the back of tight supply.

According to Jones Lang LaSalle, a real estate consulting and brokerage firm, investment by global players in the Asia Pacific region's commercial real estate reached $94 billion in 2006, up 42 percent from 2005.

Before Morgan Stanley's purchase of the Daewoo Engineering headquarters, some other major transactions include Singapore's Government Investment Corp. (GIC)'s $460 million buy of the 30-story Seoul Finance Center in 2000 and $900 million pickup of the 45-story Star Tower in southern Seoul.

On future outlook, Yoon says the demand for office space will continue to outmatch supply for years.

``While the growth of the financial sector will continue to drive up need for more and better office space, the existing buildings' renovation pace won't catch up,'' he said, explaining that major global investment banks, along with domestic institutions, have expanded their presence here.

But despite these roll-out plans, real estate researchers say Tokyo and Seoul are among the top two Asian cities that struggle with little ``Grade A'' work space.

``It's ironic, but even though businesses say they're not performing well, they seem to take up more and more space to operate,'' said Yoon.

He said, currently, one person on average takes up about 5 square meters of space at work, but a few years later, they'll need double the amount because a growing number of workers are using more than two computers.

``Not only computers, but people seem to be needing more personal space to get work done, and that leads to a boom in this big market.'' he said.

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## _00_deathscar (Mar 16, 2005)

Does Seoul even have *A* supertall right now?


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## Tom_Green (Sep 4, 2004)

_00_deathscar said:


> Does Seoul even have *A* supertall right now?


No but they have one u/c



Good for Seoul kay:


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## snow is red (May 7, 2007)

Nice work Seoul


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## weltmeister (Nov 11, 2007)

maybe seoul will have supertalls, afterall it's a growing city with more than 10mio popln?


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## LMCA1990 (Jun 18, 2005)

I'm glad for Seoul kay: Hopefully, they have a good location so that they don't look too lonely


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## davidearl (Sep 10, 2007)

hopefully they will build more supertalls than dubai...somebody needs to put them back in their place... 

this city NEEDS more highrises 

the boom would not be based on speculation and PR


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## Adams3 (Mar 2, 2007)

Why haven't Seoul built supertalls before? Why have they been so restrictive with even with such massive pop density?


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Actually Seoul isn't a very densely-populated city even though it has a huge population since the urban landscape spreads out quite significantly. Their cityscape is not full of tall skyscraper commercial towers or condos - still quite a lot of midrises and lowrises even in the historic core and Gangnam.


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## globill (Dec 4, 2005)

What are you talking about? Seoul is incredibly densely populated The city squeezes 10.4 million people into a mounntainous city of 605 square km. 

Compare that to Hong Kong with 7 million people in 1104 square km.

And Seoul's suburbs are as densely populated as Manhattan. Over half the population in Seoul reside in high rises. There are a few districts with shorter apartment blocks/houses, but that is a tiny percentage of the area.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

globill said:


> What are you talking about? Seoul is incredibly densely populated The city squeezes 10.4 million people into a mounntainous city of 605 square km.
> 
> Compare that to Hong Kong with 7 million people in 1104 square km.
> 
> And Seoul's suburbs are as densely populated as Manhattan. Over half the population in Seoul reside in high rises. There are a few districts with shorter apartment blocks/houses, but that is a tiny percentage of the area.


Wrong use of density statistics. Hong Kong's actual usable area is only about 25% of that 1104 sq km, which means the 7 million people are packed in a much smaller area, hence boosting the effective density. Although Seoul has hills, I doubt only 25% of that 605 sq km is usable. That's why the highrise percentage in Seoul can still be so low - there is a lot more usable land to spread the people out. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, virtually everyone lives in highrises. Seoul's highrise density is nowhere close to Hong Kong's. As I've said before, Seoul's cityspace is not full of skyscraper towers or condos. There are still many large pockets of low and midrises.


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## princeofseoul (Jun 8, 2004)

hkskyline said:


> Actually Seoul isn't a very densely-populated city even though it has a huge population since the urban landscape spreads out quite significantly. Their cityscape is not full of tall skyscraper commercial towers or condos - still quite a lot of midrises and lowrises even in the historic core and Gangnam.


Seoul city has an extremely high population density, higher than Manhattan or Paris. Only HongKong is a bit higher. Here are the stats for population density per urbanized area (excluding unhabited woods/mountains):

Hong Kong, pop. 6.1 million, density 44,500/km2
Seoul, pop. 10.1 million, density 29,253/km2
Manhattan, pop. 1.5 million, density 27,018/km2
Paris, pop. 2.1 million, density 24,500/km2
Tokyo 23-ward, pop. 8.5 million, density 13,687/km2
NYC, pop. 8.1 million, density 10,316/km2
London core, pop. 2.7 million, density 8,860/km2
Toronto, pop. 2.4 million, density 3,788/km2

Source: demographia.com
(population density per urbanized area).

Other facts:
* Only about half of Seoul city is urbanized, with the rest being unhabited mountaineous terrain.
* About 50-60% of Seoulites live in 12+ story tall apartment buildings.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

princeofseoul said:


> Seoul city has an extremely high population density, higher than Manhattan or Paris. Only HongKong is a bit higher. Here are the stats for population density per urbanized area (excluding inhabited woods/mountains):
> 
> Hong Kong, pop. 6.1 million, density 44,500/km2
> Seoul, pop. 10.1 million, density 29,253/km2
> ...


Hong Kong's density is 50% higher than Seoul from your statistics ... certainly more than 'a bit'.

Also, Seoul's new skyscraper condos are more human in scale, not like the skyscraper walls of 60-storey condos that Hong Kong is building. While there are some very big projects happening or under discussion, the general trend is not a whole housing estate of monster buildings.


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## princeofseoul (Jun 8, 2004)

hkskyline said:


> Hong Kong's density is 50% higher than Seoul from your statistics ... certainly more than 'a bit'.
> 
> Also, Seoul's new skyscraper condos are more human in scale, not like the skyscraper walls of 60-storey condos that Hong Kong is building. While there are some very big projects happening or under discussion, the general trend is not a whole housing estate of monster buildings.


Seoul has a pop. density 1200% more than the average european city, 700% more than toronto, and only 30% less than Hong Kong.

By world standards, Hong Kong has just a bit higher pop. density than Seoul. Not a big deal. 

And most of all, it was ludicrous to state that Seoul is not a very densily populated city. It _is_ very densily populated.


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## globill (Dec 4, 2005)

hkskyline said:


> Although Seoul has hills,......



hills are an understatement...the following are in the city of Seoul....


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## NovaWolverine (Dec 28, 2004)

I think you can get the point hkskyline is trying to make, while Seoul is denser than just about every other city, those pics don't look like HK or Tokyo maybe not even like Sao Paulo. It's dense as hell and the urbanity sprawls, but I get the point hk is trying to make.


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## superchan7 (Jan 21, 2004)

Can't compare two different worlds of density. HK and Seoul are apples and oranges with respect to usable land, regional geography and course of urbanization.

It would be interesting to see supertalls coming up in Seoul--there aren't many supertalls in East Asia--except in China and especially Hong Kong.


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## Epi (Jul 21, 2006)

globill said:


> hills are an understatement...the following are in the city of Seoul....


You just proved hkskyline's point.

Yes Seoul is more dense than almost anywhere else, but it's not that dense compared to HK, Macao and some Indian cities is his point I think... and since he's HKskyline, anything less than HK is 'not that dense'.


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## Mussoda (Mar 10, 2007)

^^ Epi.



globill said:


> hills are an understatement...the following are in the city of Seoul....


I guess globill just wanted to say about the understatement of mountains rather than the density.
and actually the pic is quite old, maybe around 1980s

You'd better see following newest pix about the density of the city, as follows ;..


old downtown









Gangnam area ...... scroll ------>









southwest part 









to northeast part from Gangnam


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## Mussoda (Mar 10, 2007)

yep.. Actually,, just about the density of highrises, hkskyline is right.
but his first post can make someone to see that he says Seoul is not dense city, as follows ;.. 


hkskyline said:


> Actually Seoul isn't a very densely-populated city even though it has a huge population since the urban landscape spreads out quite significantly. Their cityscape is not full of tall skyscraper commercial towers or condos - still quite a lot of midrises and lowrises even in the historic core and Gangnam.


so that gave rise to objections, I guess....

actually, he should've said seoul is not that dense just relatively compared to HK. or so. IMO. then, who cares?

and, sorry but i guess his words a little off-topic.

Office supply is now very difficient in Seoul,,.. and there's need of some new landmarks.. (actually 63KLI is nothing now in NE Asia.)
those conditions are driving the need of supertalls here. IMO..


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## superchan7 (Jan 21, 2004)

KLI has been Korea's tallest for decades now...still a neat looking building though.


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## globill (Dec 4, 2005)

It's really hard to capture Seoul in pictures. There are literally a dozen high-rise clusters. And when you consider the metro area, with Bundang and Incheon etc. it is literally impossible to get a visual understanding like you can in Shanghai, NYC, or Sao Paulo. 
Some of this is due to the mountains and the very wide Han River. Ten years ago, the buildings going up were in the 20-story range. Now there seems to be a lot more in the 40-50 story-range.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Seoul doesn't have the skyscraper canyons that Manhattan has, even though New York as a whole regional area isn't so densely populated beyond Manhattan. The urban built-up zone is not so tall. Yes, Seoul may be a huge city and densely populated, but its building arrangement and heights don't show that, which makes Seoul more human in scale.

Yes, HK is perhaps one of the top places in terms of density, but my point is not to compare Seoul to HK. In fact, even some historic parts of Paris have insane density, as does Macau, due to the building arrangement. This doesn't seem to be a problem Seoul faces. It's a good thing. We need to learn how to pack a large city into manageable heights.

The fact that Seoul's highrises are clustered means there are many pockets of low and midrises as I've alluded. The key is whether those in-between density drops will be filled in, how they'll be filled in, and whether that'll cause more problems beyond solving population growth woes.


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## princeofseoul (Jun 8, 2004)

hkskyline said:


> Seoul doesn't have the skyscraper canyons that Manhattan has, even though New York as a whole regional area isn't so densely populated beyond Manhattan.


There's two skyscraper canyons in Seoul, teheran street (3.5km long canyon) and Gangnam street (about 1.5 km long canyon).

Manhattan certainly has more -- I'm guessing this is due to extreme corporate wealth there. 



hkskyline said:


> The urban built-up zone is not so tall. Yes, Seoul may be a huge city and densely populated, but its building arrangement and heights don't show that, which makes Seoul more human in scale.


Only compared to HK. Compared to most (all?) other metro areas (Paris, NYC on average, London, Tokyo, etc), the urban built-up zone is actually quite tall with a minority living in low-rise. 



hkskyline said:


> Yes, HK is perhaps one of the top places in terms of density, but my point is not to compare Seoul to HK. In fact, even some historic parts of Paris have insane density, as does Macau, due to the building arrangement. This doesn't seem to be a problem Seoul faces. It's a good thing. We need to learn how to pack a large city into manageable heights.


Not sure about Macau. But I know Paris relatively well since my folks lived there 3 years in the past -- I can't think of a neighborhood there with "insane" population density. According to official data, the highest population density in Paris is in the 11th arrondissement (149,000 persons, 40,672 persons/km2). The highest pop. density in Seoul is in Gwanak-gu (527,000 persons, 46,700 persons/km2). 



hkskyline said:


> The fact that Seoul's highrises are clustered means there are many pockets of low and midrises as I've alluded. The key is whether those in-between density drops will be filled in, how they'll be filled in, and whether that'll cause more problems beyond solving population growth woes.


There is no population growth in Seoul. The population has been steadily declining since the late 80s when it hit a peak close to 11.0 millions. More highrise buildings are being built for business needs, to make space for more parks, and to increase the living space per capita which is still lagging a bit behind northwestern european cities (22m2/person vs 30m2/person).


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## princeofseoul (Jun 8, 2004)

NovaWolverine said:


> I think you can get the point hkskyline is trying to make, while Seoul is denser than just about every other city, those pics don't look like HK or Tokyo maybe not even like Sao Paulo. It's dense as hell and the urbanity sprawls, but I get the point hk is trying to make.


It's impossible to compare megacities with only a few pictures. You would need to look at hundreds or thousands of pictures, combined with a map to make a proper assessment.

PS: Contrarily to popular belief, Seoul has more highrise (20+ stories) and much more midrise (6-20 stories) than Tokyo. There's only the area within the JR Yamanote Line (pop. 1 million) which gives me the same feel as Seoul city (pop. 10 million) as far as "mid-highrise building density" is concerned. Not sure about Sao Paulo, I haven't lived there.


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## princeofseoul (Jun 8, 2004)

superchan7 said:


> KLI has been Korea's tallest for decades now...still a neat looking building though.


Only until 2003. Since then, the tallest buildings in Korea are the Tower Palace three and the the Mokdong Hyperion I -- both residential complexes.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

princeofseoul said:


> There's two skyscraper canyons in Seoul, teheran street (3.5km long canyon) and Gangnam street (about 1.5 km long canyon).
> 
> Manhattan certainly has more -- I'm guessing this is due to extreme corporate wealth there.


Actually, even lots of areas where there is little corporate presence, the density is still there. There are plenty of skyscraper and built-upn canyons in Midtown that are made up of a large contingent of residentials. In fact, skyscraper canyons don't necessary correlate with wealth. Europe is not a big skyscraper place, not as much as Asia, yet they're among the wealthiest people in the world. You don't spot the world's tallest buildings anywhere in Switzerland or Luxembourg, for example.



princeofseoul said:


> Not sure about Macau. But I know Paris relatively well since my folks lived there 3 years in the past -- I can't think of a neighborhood there with "insane" population density. According to official data, the highest population density in Paris is in the 11th arrondissement (149,000 persons, 40,672 persons/km2). The highest pop. density in Seoul is in Gwanak-gu (527,000 persons, 46,700 persons/km2).


Europe's population density figures lies in how buildings are packed together rather than purely a statistical number. The lowrises are very tightly placed together. Although not so tall, it squeezes in quite a large population consistently. Hence, we should not under-estimate how large cities can maintain that size without too many skyscrapers. As your statistics point out, Paris' densest arrond. is not so less dense than Seoul's densest district, which is a bit surprising considering Paris' rather lowrise core. Yet 11eme doesn't seem to be in the banlieus where so many skyscraper public housing resides. Are there many skyscrapers there at all? In fact, I've stayed in that arrond. before near the Bastille. Don't recall major skyscraper clusters there.

This also is supported by the Macau case in Asia. Macau is not a heavily-skyscrapered place, yet its density is among the highest in the world.


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## princeofseoul (Jun 8, 2004)

hkskyline said:


> Yet 11eme doesn't seem to be in the banlieus where so many skyscraper public housing resides. Are there many skyscrapers there at all? In fact, I've stayed in that arrond. before near the Bastille. Don't recall major skyscraper clusters there.


Most of the highrise (20+floors) are in the 15th and especially the 13th arrondissements. I don't think there's any in the 11th.

Gwanak-gu is a bit similar: not as many high-rise as Seocho/Gangnam but higher pop. density.


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## dhuwman (Oct 6, 2005)

One of the reasons for lack of highrises in Seoul so far could be its location. Seoul's only 50km (35 miles) away from North Korea, meaning it has been very vulnerable to missile attacks from NK, thus regulating a strict altitude limit was pivotal. However, due to recent economic and military development of SK that now exceeds that of NK, and due to ever-close North-South relationship, thanks to Sunshine policy, the threat has much reduced. I think that's one of the reasons for recent plans for more highrises in Seoul.


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