You can learn more about our use of cookies on the website by reading our Cookie Notice. By using this website or clicking OK, you consent to the use of cookies. Positioned as the gateway to Northeast Asia, the 1, acre Songdo International Business District IBD is a model for future, sustainable city-scale developments, not only in Asia but across the globe.
At the turn of the 19th century, the Garden City movement saw a generation of bucolic communities planned in reaction to the grime and overcrowding of rapidly industrialising cities, driven by a powerful campaign for social reform. Half a century later, the New Town movement developed these ideas, promising a brave new world of modern, self-sufficient municipalities rising from the ruins of the second world war, and focused on building an inclusive, democratic society.
Now, in the first decades of a new millennium, a surge in global population growth and a sense of impending environmental armageddon have spurred an epidemic of planned cities of a very different kind.
This time they are being conceived by private multinational corporations as gilt-edged gated communities and tax-exempt free-trade hubs, each branded as the ultimate techno-eco-utopia. All these newly minted urbanites will need somewhere to live and work. Yet the vast majority of the newly planned cities are not being designed to house the coming tidal wave of rural-urban migrants. They are instruments to attract international investment and make the urban rich even richer, at a time when property has become the ultimate global currency.
That represents three and a half times global GDP, or 40 times the value of all the gold ever mined. While once we dug down to extract value from the earth, the bristling glass towers of these new urban enclaves are the inverted mineshafts of today — complete with equally damaging side effects. This new breed of city takes various different forms, from government initiatives, to public-private partnerships, to entirely private enterprises.
Many are being used to jump-start economies in the developing world, with masterplans carefully calibrated to attract foreign investors and treasuries looking to sink their funds into something concrete. At the southern tip of Malaysia on a series of four artificial islands, one such promised Elysium is sprouting from the sand.
It is planned to house , people by The apartments are prohibitively expensive for most Malaysians but a relative bargain for Chinese investors, who have been flown here in droves and bussed to the spaceship-shaped sales gallery to marvel at the enormous model of the Avatar-like world that awaits. Cashiers stand at the end of the guided tour to take credit card down-payments before the tourists get back on the bus. Reclamation began without the required environmental impact assessment, and the effects have already been felt by local fishermen, who complain of reduced catches due to the destruction of their fragile ecosystem.
The emerging island community, meanwhile, is not so much a city as a ghostly duty-free resort, a haunted Photoshop montage mostly bereft of full-time residents. Certain aspects, including story twin towers, were downgraded or eliminated after the recession. The completion date also moved from to , and some elements are still under construction. Perhaps most important, the community only recently surpassed , residents, a third of its intended population.
Many workers live in Seoul or other districts, where housing is cheaper. CityLab reports only a handful of major organizations, mainly universities and biomedical firms, have offices in Songdo. Cars are still common, in part because the frigid winters make walking to bus stops untenable and because the dearth of residents means a lack of community. If residents want to make friends or even enjoy a sense of connection, they drive to Seoul.
It may seem appropriate to compare Songdo to Masdar : both are new smart cities near older megacities, built by governments to promote economic growth and draw international investment. They both aim to reduce car use and carbon production. They both have seen significantly less success than hoped. However, where Masdar fails to meet its goals but continues to push an image of an idyllic smart city, Songdo has been more flexible and is developing more organically.
NPR reported in that 99 percent of Songdo homes are sold to native Koreans. Specifically, in , the planning authorities announced a new focus on drawing more biotechnology research and companies to the area. Well, the community is doing fine. Hopefully, some of the developments that have made the city cleaner and more environmentally friendly will eventually find their way into the places where people live now.
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