ABSTRACT
During the past several decades, the Seoul metropolitan region has experienced significant suburbanization, with massive residential development in suburban areas. However, the types of residential development and suburbanization processes are quite different from those of Western countries. In the Seoul metropolitan area (SMA), there are few low-density suburban developments, which are common in North America. Rather than low-density suburban communities, high-rise apartment complexes outside the 20 to 40 kilometer radius of Seoul’s central business district (CBD) have been constructed for the majority of the middle class. The powerful central government-initiated planned development used tools such as housing supply and land use regulation, and the emerging middle class, which has increased due to rapid economic development since the 1970s, demanding relatively comfortable, convenient, and inexpensive high-rise apartment complexes. If utopia for the middle class in North America has been a low-density single-family residential area in suburbs, the high-rise apartment complex in the SMA has become such a place in Korea.
Suburban development in the SMA is closely related to the emergence of middle-class households and the government-initiated housing supply of new developments in an era of rapid industrialization and economic growth. In this chapter, we examine the suburban development patterns and their driving forces in the SMA. First, we introduce a brief history of the urbanization process of the Seoul metropolitan region in the twentieth century. Then, we examine the green belt policy and land readjustment projects prior to the mid-1980s. We also investigate government-initiated new town development in the late-1980s. Finally, we summarize the experience and problems of massive suburban development, and discuss lessons and policy implications in the SMA.
