Day 9

Today we visited the city of Songdo-Dong. This is a city right outside of Icheon. Visiting this area was quite a shock to me. It was incredible to me how little people were in this city. It seems to me that it was decided to build a city out of far spaced skyscrapers, in hopes that people would move out there and fill them. The project is still underway, and expected to be finished in 2022. It was projected that at this point the area should have 300,000 residents, while it currently only has around 120,000. That’s not much more than Greenville… and look at the size of the buildings compared to Greenville! The city apparently had a green space ratio of about 60%. They built it this way because the city is supposed to be a “green city” with over 40% of buildings being LEED certified. However, these green spaces aren’t kept up well. The city does not have enough residents to hire enough workers to maintain the grounds at the central park.

Pictured first is an example of some of the buildings in the area, showing the massive size of the skyscrapers.

Pictured second is an example of the areas overgrowing.