How to Reduce CO2 Emissions by 10 % in Seoul

June 4, 2013 by 2 Comments

nocar-seoul2Some days ago I came across an article about how Seoul was able to reduce their CO2 emissions by 10% annually. Of course, it was through a policy which aimed at individual transport. The really unique thing is that the reduction wasn’t made by force or through investing billions into structural measures. A program with certain benefits made it attractive for car drivers to participate voluntarily. The only thing they had to do is to leave their car at home once a week and use public transport to get to work. Even greater is how Seoul monitors this activity: through a sticker. Yes, a sticker saves around 2 million tons of CO2. You don’t believe me? Read more of this post

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Vision of Transport in Seoul for 2030

May 27, 2013 by Leave a comment

Surprisingly, last week the Seoul Metropolitan Government published their vision for transport in 2030. This is going to lead the direction of transport planning in Seoul for almost two decades. The picture shows how the measures are divided: 1. people (red), 2. sharing (blue), 3. environment (green)

I’m going to introduce to you the most important ideas of each part and in the summary I’ll try to point out the most important problems which might hinder the realization of this vision. Read more of this post

Filed under General News and Updates, Public Infrastructure, Seoul Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

First Survey of Seoul’s Night Bus Services

May 3, 2013 by 5 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

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Bike Path Extension at Cheonggyecheon

April 22, 2013 by 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.
bikefree-seoul-1 Read more of this post

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A Transport Conference About Happiness and Creativity

April 21, 2013 by 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.

koticonference2013The 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

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Overview of Seoul’s Car-Sharing Services

April 18, 2013 by 1 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

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The End of Dream Hub

April 10, 2013 by 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.

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(Source: Dream Hub)

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Seoul’s 100-Year Plan

April 6, 2013 by 1 Comment

seoul100planOn 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

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Public Transport in Taipei

March 31, 2013 by 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.

Chiang-Kai-shek

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Keeping the Joongang Cinema in Pictures

March 23, 2013 by 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.

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