Korea Land & Housing Corporation (LH) has begun preparing a design competition for an integrated urban architectural plan to build 6,800 homes on the former Taereung Country Club site. The site has yet to be designated as a housing district, and UNESCO has not completed its review of a heritage impact assessment. The move is the first real-world application of the parallel approval process the government pledged in its Aug. 13 policy package, aimed at accelerating housing supply.
LH recently released preliminary specifications for the "Seoul Taereung Public Housing District Integrated Urban Architectural Plan Design Competition," industry sources said on the 18th. By starting preparations roughly five months ahead of the district designation target set for next March, the agency is moving faster on the follow-up steps needed to deliver 6,800 homes. A Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport official said it is "effectively the first case of actually running the various procedures simultaneously, as announced in the Aug. 13 package."
Under the Aug. 13 package, the ministry said it would cut the average time for public land development projects from 68 months between the announcement of a candidate site and the start of construction to 37 months, by pursuing district designation and district planning at the same time and beginning basic surveys before designation.
The key change is moving away from a sequential approach in which each stage waits for the previous permits to be completed. Public housing districts typically proceed in the order of district designation, a design competition for the integrated urban architectural plan, district plan approval, then compensation and groundbreaking. The third-phase new towns are the main example. The first large-scale site to break that sequence was the Seoripul district in Seocho-gu, covering 2.21 million square meters and 18,000 homes. LH issued the Seoripul design competition in December last year before district designation, and the area was designated two months later, in February this year.
Taereung goes a step further, running three procedures at once: district designation, the design competition and the world heritage impact assessment. The National Heritage Committee gave conditional approval to LH's heritage impact assessment report in August, but the UNESCO review is not finished. The competition is also being launched five months ahead of the district designation target of next March.
Uncertainties remain. If UNESCO requests revisions, that could lead to changes in the plan or delays to the schedule. If the number of floors or units changes, the design conditions already presented could change as well. A study commissioned by LH and released in 2023 recommended capping building heights at six to eight stories. The scope of work reflects these constraints. It calls for determining building heights and the skyline by analyzing sightlines between the project site and the Joseon royal tombs of Taereung and Gangneung, and for setting design guidelines for buildings and landscaping in line with the heritage impact assessment.
The Taereung site was announced as a location for 10,000 homes in the Aug. 4 package in 2020, later reduced to 6,800, and district designation has been held up for six years over the world heritage issue. The government aims to designate the district next March, approve the district plan in 2028 and break ground in September 2029. Because the heritage assessment results are still needed, the ministry plans to sign the actual contract for the competition at the time of district designation. "Releasing the preliminary specifications is a way of notifying the market in advance so firms can prepare," the ministry official said.