Oh Se-hoon: "Relax Building Regulations to Expand Urban Green Spaces through Public Contributions"... Seoul Downtown Green Space Ratio Increased 4 Times

Announcement of 'Green Ecological Urban Rebirth Strategy' to Revitalize City Center through High-Density, Mixed-Use Development and Green Space Expansion
Bold Relaxation of Building Regulations such as Height and Floor Area Ratio to Promote Urban Development
Expansion of Green Space Ratio from Current 3.7% to Over 15%

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] The heart of Seoul will be reborn as a ‘green ecological urban center’ where skyscrapers and green forests coexist. The Seoul city government plans to boldly relax existing building regulations such as building height (below 90m) and floor area ratio (below 600%) and use the public contributions gained from this to create parks and green spaces that connect the entire city center with greenery, raising the green space ratio in downtown Seoul from a mere 3.7% to over 15%, more than quadrupling it.

On the 21st, Mayor Oh Se-hoon announced the ‘Green Ecological Urban Center Re-creation Strategy,’ which simultaneously promotes high-density, mixed-use development and the securing of green spaces to transform the declining vitality of downtown Seoul and create a new face for the city. Currently, parks and green spaces available to citizens in downtown Seoul account for only 3.7% of the total area. Even including royal palaces, it is only 8.5%, which is significantly lower compared to major global cities such as Manhattan in New York (26.8%) and Central London in the UK (14.6%).

While major global cities have developed their downtown areas with a blueprint to secure both skyscrapers and abundant greenery, Seoul’s downtown has been developed without sufficient consideration of how and how much green space to secure. Especially with the digital transformation and the COVID-19 pandemic blurring the boundaries between work, residence, and rest spaces, and with climate change intensifying heat waves and fine dust, calls for expanding green spaces are growing louder.

Seoul will first begin redevelopment on the 440,000㎡ area of the ‘Jongmyo~Toegye-ro district,’ which is the most deteriorated and urgently in need of change in downtown Seoul. Subsequently, the entire downtown area will be transformed into a ‘green ecological urban center’ stretching east to west from 1-ga to 8-ga and north to south from Yulgok-ro to Toegye-ro, creating a city dyed green when viewed from the sky.

Seoul has established specific implementation strategies for creating the ‘green ecological urban center’ by dividing downtown Seoul into three zones according to regional characteristics: new redevelopment zones, ongoing redevelopment zones, and characteristic management zones, and has prepared green space securing plans suitable for each zone. The ‘new redevelopment zones’ include areas such as Jongmyo~Toegye-ro and Dongdaemun·DDP, where redevelopment has not yet occurred and deterioration and stagnation are accelerating; these will build green networks through high-density, mixed-use development.

Next, the ‘ongoing redevelopment zones’ are areas like Gwanghwamun~City Hall where redevelopment has already been completed; green spaces will be secured through restructuring of publicly accessible spaces, vertical greening, and three-dimensional greening. The ‘characteristic management zones’ are areas requiring tailored management such as Hanok-dense neighborhoods or Insadong and Myeongdong, where green pedestrian paths or hub-type green rest areas will be created depending on the location.

For the ‘new redevelopment zones,’ where high-density, mixed-use development and large-scale green space securing are possible, Seoul has prepared strategies for ‘relaxing building regulations’ and ‘securing green spaces’ to vigorously promote private redevelopment. As a leading project, the 440,000㎡ Jongmyo~Toegye-ro area will be prioritized for redevelopment. The leading project in the Jongmyo~Toegye-ro area will be promoted as an ‘integrated redevelopment method’ that groups fragmented areas, which have been left undeveloped for the past decade, into appropriately sized units for development. Additionally, among 171 zones, 147 zones that have passed their sunset period due to lack of development over a certain period will be readjusted into about 20 redevelopment zones. These zones will also be allowed flexible integration to increase the scale by merging zones.

Seoul will also create block-by-block parks to ensure a seamless green network within the zones, and arrange open spaces, which were previously created individually for each building, in locations connected to parks to enhance citizen convenience. Underground spaces will be developed integrally to minimize vehicle access routes on the surface, and roads will be reduced to essential sections and converted into linear green spaces. Furthermore, when reducing building coverage ratio to create shared spaces on the lower floors of buildings, additional height relaxation measures will be actively pursued.

Upon completion of the leading project in the Jongmyo~Toegye-ro area, approximately 140,000㎡ of parks and green spaces will be created, more than four times the size of ‘Yeontral Park’ (34,200㎡). Seoul’s representative green axis, extending from Bukaksan Mountain through Jongmyo and Namsan to the Han River, will be completed. Based on this green ecological urban center re-creation strategy, Seoul plans to revise the higher-level plans such as the Seoul Downtown Basic Plan and the Urban and Residential Environment Maintenance Basic Plan by the second half of this year through public discussions and opinion gathering, and to begin zone-specific redevelopment projects in earnest from the second half of next year.

Mayor Oh Se-hoon said, “Downtown Seoul, which has been stagnant for a long time, now requires new directions and strategies to overcome the limitations of existing policies. Through the new strategy of ‘green ecological urban center,’ which has never been attempted anywhere in Seoul before, we will recreate the ‘original downtown,’ which has been overshadowed by preservation and regulation, into a ‘future downtown’ full of rest, leisure, and vitality, and return it to the citizens.”

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