Gyeonggi Housing & Urban Development Corporation (GH) is pursuing a station-area revitalization program that would group areas within a 15-minute walk of rail stations into single living zones and supply housing, jobs and neighborhood public infrastructure at the same time. The agency plans to create a supply model that pairs housing for young adults with industrial and commercial space and public services, and to select two pilot sites that GH would develop directly. The aim is to absorb rising demand around station areas created by the expansion of the metropolitan rail network under public leadership and to make better use of those areas.
GH will soon issue a tender for a study titled "Plan for Creating and Revitalizing Station-Centered Living Zones in Gyeonggi Province" containing these measures, industry sources said on the 15th.
The core of the plan is to link rail access to housing supply, local jobs and expanded neighborhood services. GH views major station areas as having grown in importance as living hubs capable of accommodating both housing for young adults and industrial and commercial functions, as transport networks including metropolitan subway lines, the Great Train Express (GTX) and urban rail have expanded. Because development conditions differ across the province's 31 cities and counties, however, the agency does not plan to apply the same development method at every station and will instead divide stations into types according to their characteristics and demand.
Each living zone will be set as the area reachable within a 15-minute walk from a station exit, taking into account actual pedestrian routes, road networks and topography. In addition to stations now in operation, the scope will include stations scheduled to open that have received approval for their business plans or implementation plans. For each living zone, the study will examine, by type, changes and movements in the population of young adults and single-person households, as well as facilities that generate demand such as industrial, office and commercial buildings and universities. GH will create a mixed-use supply model that combines job space, public services and neighborhood public infrastructure around housing, and will identify facilities that local residents lack and locations with poor access in order to propose directions for improving living conditions alongside housing supply.
Development methods will not be limited to developing new sites. The agency will also review redevelopment of existing built-up districts, use of idle space and consolidation of public facilities into mixed-use buildings. Public parking lots, government offices, closed schools and vacant retail and office buildings will be examined for their potential to house neighborhood public infrastructure.
GH plans to use direct public development as the basic approach, while also reviewing private participation and public-private partnership formats depending on the characteristics of each project. After narrowing down candidate sites for priority projects based on housing demand, public interest, development feasibility, the availability of publicly owned land and the potential for cooperation with city and county governments, the agency will analyze the basic concept and business viability of two sites with a high likelihood of direct public development. Daegok Station in Deogyang District, Goyang, where five urban rail lines converge, is among the sites mentioned as candidates. "It is not that we have particular project sites in mind," a GH official said. "We will determine the pilot sites in the end through the study."
GH previously developed the Gwangju Station Area Youth Innovation Town, which combines 316 units of integrated public rental housing with two knowledge industry center buildings, a five-minute walk from Gyeonggi Gwangju Station on the Gyeonggang Line. The "Gyeonggi-Style Housing Supply Strategy" that Gyeonggi Province Governor Choo Mi-ae proposed to Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Hong Ji-sun on the 2nd of this month also included a "station-area mixed-use development" model that concentrates residential, office and commercial functions at metropolitan rail hubs such as GTX stations.
Industry watchers expect the program to move in a direction similar to the Seoul Metropolitan Government's "Seoul Station-Area Work-Live-Play Revitalization Strategy," unveiled in March. Seoul decided to convert all 325 of its station areas into mixed-use living hubs by 2031 and expanded the number of stations eligible for upgrades to commercial zoning from 153 to all 325. It will allow a maximum floor area ratio of 1,300% within a 500-meter radius of transfer stations and raised its supply target for long-term jeonse housing (a lump-sum deposit lease) in station areas to 212,000 units.
Seoul's approach offers private developers incentives in the form of zoning upgrades and eased public contribution requirements, while GH's plan differs in that it treats direct public development as the default. Kim Duk-rye, head of the housing research division at the Korea Housing Industry Research Institute, said: "When the public sector takes the lead, it can speed up projects that have moved slowly because of weak profitability or conflicts within the project site. It could be a better-suited approach for Gyeonggi Province."