ABSTRACT
The growth of Seoul’s property market and Korea’s tendency to build new towns culminated in Bundang and Ilsan – the city-scale residential new towns developed on the outskirts of Seoul in the late 1980s. These new towns were symbolic megaprojects of the newly democratized regime and had the significance of initiating Seoul’s growth as a metropolitan area beyond its greenbelt boundary. Providing new homeownership to many of Seoul’s middle class, the new towns stretched Seoul’s real estate market into the surrounding Gyeonggi province. Reflecting the state’s intentions, the majority of housing units provided by the new towns were in the form of apartments: 87,716 out of 97,500 units in Bundang and 57,565 out of 69,000 units in Ilsan. Therefore, these suburban new towns closely resembled the urban form typically found in Gangnam – a mega-cluster of high-rise apartment buildings (Figure 4.1). They were thus distinctively different from Ebenezer Howard’s garden cities or suburban residential areas seen in the U.S. They were also different from other Korean industrial new towns in that they were built in the capital region and indicated the state’s new residential emphasis. <target id="page_63" target-type="page">63</target>Typical apartment complexes in Bundang. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315278018/0c4f3b62-f7c5-4452-b67c-1b92ce55a642/content/fig04_01.jpg"/> Source: Photo by Yunsoo Kim.
