Plans for Kimpo New Town To Be Curtailed

The site for the Kimpo New Town development will be reduced to 1.5 million square meters, about one-third the initially planned 4.8 million square meters. The reductions will likely necessitate changes in housing supplies and traffic networks in the new town area.

The Ministry of Construction and Transportation said on June 28 that its initial plans for a 4.8-square-meter wide new town plan in the city of Kimpo and Yangchon-myon had to be reduced to 1.5 million square meters because the Ministry of Defense demanded the cuts for the protection of military facilities.

The ministry will officially designate the site for the new town in July after consultation with Kimpo city and Departments of the Agriculture and Environment.

The ministry announced plans for new towns in Kimpo and Paju in May in an attempt to stem rising housing development in Seoul and its metropolitan area. The original plan was to build a town as large as Ilsan (4.76 million square meters), but has now been curtailed to the size of Pyongchon (1.54 million square meters).

The number of housing units will be reduced to 25,000 units (75,000 residents) from an initial 70,000 units (210,000 residents).

The ministry will cancel one expressway from a light rail and two other expressways it had initially planned.

“We will attempt to increase the size of the new town, depending on the progress in North-South Korean relations, or find an alternate site,” said Suh Jong-dae, the director of the new town planning task force at the ministry.

In related news, the ministry will designate a 3.35 million square meter site in the Yi-ui district of the city of Suwon as a new housing development area. The Yi-ui new town will house 20,000 housing units, administration offices and high-tech R&D facilities by 2010.

Kwang-Hyun Kim kkh@donga.com