Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon announced the vision “Garden City, Seoul,” declaring a shift into a “global garden city,” a departure from the dense forest of gray structures.
The “Great Han River Project,” unveiled earlier, prioritizes exploring Seoul’s attractions, such as “Seoul Ring,” the world's largest spokeless Ferris wheel in Korea, and ways of reinventing city and architect designs. The steps are designed to attract 30 million inbound tourist arrivals.
The latest vision calls for vacating a dense forest of gray structures and instead filling it with green and ecological spaces in which Seoulites can enjoy during their daily life.
The move is context with global major cities’ declaration of transition to an ‘environmental city’, a green city and a sustainable city to not only cope with heat waves and downpours, occurrence of fine dust and national disasters, caused by global warming and climate change, but also raise urban competitiveness and deal with change to future society changes.
In order to comply with these global trends and transition to a green city, Seoul has made large-sized relocation sites and idle space into big parks, such as the renovation of Boramae Park, the opening of Noeul Park, creation of “North Seoul Dream’s Forest,” and restoration of “Seongsu-dong Valley” and vacated several parts, filled with an immense forest of gray structures, such as houses, commercial buildings and roads.
But Seoulites see the capital as still lacking neighborhood parks — standing at a mere 5.65 sq. meters per head as of the end of last year, not counting its outside national park and suburban forests.
In this regard, the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) has decided to push ahead with the vision “Garden City, Seoul” with four strategies: vacation, connectivity, ecology and sensibility. SMG plans to implement a combined 30 projects.
The following are details of the projects.
Vacation: Open Parks Making City Breathe
The Songhyun-dong culture and park site in downtown Seoul, covering 26,604 sq. meters, has come back to the arms of Seoulites, so it will be made into a specialized in-city park.
The formerly U.S. military base in Yongsan, covering 2,426,748 sq. meters, will be a world-class garden, bearing a resemblance to each country’s representative gardens.
In addition to the central government’s goal of returning theses into people’s arms, SMG will recommend to the government a proposal to create these parks the way Seoulites participate and garden.
SMG also plans to change the Magok-dong 813 area, currently cut off with its surrounding area by fences, into a citizens’ recreation garden of seasonal flower plants, corresponding to the landscape of the neighboring Seoul Botanical Garden.
The metropolitan government will make underground passages for parts of the Parliament Road, Yeongdong Grand Road and Gyeongbu Expressway, and the existing surface roads will give way to parks and gardens.
Connectivity: Finding Parks in a Five-Minute Walk from Any Place
The Seoul Chorok Roads (Seoul Green Roads) will be connected with outside “Dullaegil” (trails), low hill roads, parks and riverside roads so any Seoulite can find flowers and plants and enjoy reading, athletic activities and trekking at a five-minute walk distance from any place.
To this end, SMG will create new Seoul Chorok Roads, standing at .6 km in length. Such roads will be extended to 2,063.4 km by 2026.
The number of Seoul’s Dullaegil trail courses will be expanded from the current eight to 21, while parts of the trail courses will increase from the current 17 to 49. They will be linked with famous spots and traditional markets to reinvigorate the neighborhood economy.
Meanwhile, a boulevard between Gwanghwamun and Seoul Railroad Station has been narrowed to give way to expansive street green zones since June 2021.
Seoul’s longest “street garden” will be created along a 10-km-long road connecting Gwanghwamun and Nodeulseom.
Seoulites will be able to take rest under the shadow of a forest of pine trees and on benches at Seoul City Hall Plaza.
The “Green Way” project calls for creating lawn roads, landscaping and relaxation facilities along the Deoksu Palace Road, allowing people to walk in downtown Seoul during their daily life.
The “Seoul Area Forest” project calls for crating tree indoor forests by 2026.
The private sector’s project to create rooftop gardens and open them to public entry calls for creating 12 such gardens this year increasing the number to 48 by 2026.
_정원도시 서울 기자설명회01.jpg)
