Upcoming projects around Seoul and the rest of Korea
May 3, 2013 4 Comments
Since April 19 there are buses operating through the whole night on two routes in Seoul. The transport division of Seoul City Government published some statistics about the usage of the night bus. This survey is very important because it helps the city government to decide if operation should continue and expand or not. Read more of this post
April 29, 2013 2 Comments
We talked about the history of streetcars in Seoul and that Korea is developing a new type of public transport method, which merges the advantages of streetcars and buses. The dependence on fossil fuels has to be reduced. The solution are electrically powered vehicles. Electric vehicles could get energy through external connections (like overhead wire) or they have to carry a battery with a high capacity. Even though overhead wires are still very common in Europe, Korea seems to prefer batteries. That makes the development very challenging and creative solutions have to be found. In Korea, a company seemed to found such a solution, which involves changing batteries instead of recharging them directly inside of the vehicle.
April 22, 2013 Leave a comment
Since the first time that I’ve heard that the whole Cheonggyecheon is going to be sidelined with bike paths, I waited for this day. I marked it in my calendar, too. Finally, today on this lovely Sunday was the first event and together with a lot of other people I cycled from the beginning to the stream on car-free roads and on separated bike lanes.
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April 21, 2013 Leave a comment
On Friday, I’ve attended a conference about challenges and goals for transportation in Korea in the next 12 months. President Park Geun-Hye strongly emphasized in her inauguration speech that happiness of people and the promotion of creative economies are important matters for her and so the Korea Transport Institute (KOTI) implements these two things into their planning.
The main presentation in front of all participants tried to answer the question how do you combine transport with creativity and happiness? Read more of this post
April 18, 2013 Leave a comment
Earlier this year, we wrote about Seoul Metropolitan Government‘s car-sharing service which started two months ago. Actually that wasn’t the first car-sharing service in Korea’s capital and also some more followed soon after it. So this post tries to put up an overview of all the services. Read more of this post
April 17, 2013 5 Comments
One of the youngest subway lines in Seoul’s metropolitan region has some problems, which could become a serious safety issue. Certain parts of the subway rail tracks on the Sinbundang Line broke in around 400 cases until now. Read more of this post
April 10, 2013 11 Comments
The largest urban planning project of South Korea is never going to be realized. Of course, I talk about Yongsan International Business District. KORAIL announced that they won’t develop the land. The bought properties are going back to their former owners and the partners of Dream Hub project get their investment back. The project never made it out of the planning phase. However, the plans are pretty amazing and so I’ll try to show briefly a real estate developer’s dream.
(Source: Dream Hub)
April 6, 2013 Leave a comment
On April 1st, Park Won-Soon introduced the measure to design a basic plan of Seoul about the development in the next 100 years, in short “Seoul 100 Plan” (or in Korean “미래 서울 100년 도시계획 기반마련”). Here, I’ll introduce the idea behind this move and show some details of the presentation.
Seoul’s mayor Park Won-Soon begun his presentation with the comment that urban planning isn’t only about managing land, it’s about many different areas like culture, education, welfare and so on. It’s important to organize the usage of space well. Read more of this post
March 31, 2013 8 Comments
The last six days I was in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, for a city-trip. Beforehand I heard a lot of good things about public transport of Taipei and so I was very excited to use subway, bus and other modes of transport. This post is going to summarize my experience and from time to time I’ll compare it with Seoul. The following picture shows the most important historical figures for Taiwan Chiang Kai-shek and China Sun Yat-sen sitting in a train.
March 23, 2013 4 Comments
Seoul is a very dynamic city and the built environment develops very fast. The changes can be through a new shop or restaurant, a new facade or even completely new buildings. Old buildings get torn down and replaced by new ones in a blink of an eye, at least it feels like that. With this post, I want to capture one place and share with you: The Joongang Cinema (중앙시네마) is a movie theater in Myeongdong, downtown Seoul.
