Seoul City Revises Floor Area Ratio Incentive Calculation Standards and Management Measures for Residential Lodging Facilities

[Asia Economy Reporter Donghyun Choi] The Seoul Metropolitan Government is reorganizing the floor area ratio (FAR) incentive calculation standards and management measures for living accommodation facilities.

On the 24th, Seoul announced that it held the 19th Urban and Architectural Joint Committee and approved the amendment of the "District Unit Plan Decision Change" based on these contents. This decision is expected to be fully implemented around February next year.

Regarding the FAR incentives, Seoul will not only apply the "Public Facilities Donation FAR Incentive Operation Standards," revised in January last year, to newly designated and reorganized district unit plan zones but will also expand its application to previously designated district unit plan zones. The background for the revision at that time was to address fairness issues caused by differences in incentive amounts (building floor area) by donation type (land, building, cash), even when the total donation rate was the same. However, the previous standards continued to apply to district unit plan zones designated before the revision, causing ongoing fairness controversies. Therefore, Seoul plans to uniformly apply the revised standards to all 302 district unit plan zones within the city.

The management standards for living accommodation facilities have also been uniformly reorganized. Since the introduction of living accommodation facilities through the 2013 revision of the Building Act, these facilities have been operated similarly to general multi-family housing and officetels, allowing lodging, cooking, sales, and resident registration. Despite being developed as an alternative to housing demand due to recent real estate regulations and being used for long-term stays and residential purposes, there has been no urban planning management tool for their use regulation.

To prevent indiscriminate supply of living accommodation facilities in commercial areas, Seoul established the "Management Measures for Living Accommodation Facilities within District Unit Zones" on the 9th of last month. Previously, when establishing district unit plans in commercial and semi-residential areas, only officetels were excluded from the mandatory non-residential use ratio, and there were no regulations on living accommodation facilities. However, going forward, living accommodation facilities will be subject to the same standards as officetels. Among the 106 district unit plan zones in commercial areas, the revised standards will apply to 63 zones, excluding those already designated as non-permitted lodging facility zones.

Hong Seon-gi, Director of Urban Management at Seoul City, expressed expectations that "this will resolve fairness issues between district unit plan zones caused by the previously problematic capped FAR incentive calculation formula and contribute to street revitalization by inducing commercial facility locations within commercial areas."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.