The Korea Land & Housing Corporation (LH) has begun preparing a design competition for an integrated urban and architectural plan to build 6,800 homes on the site of the Taeneung golf course in Seoul. The aim is to start the design process before the district designation and UNESCO's heritage impact assessment review are complete, shortening the overall project timeline. The move puts into practice the parallel-approvals approach the government laid out in its Aug. 13 housing package, speeding up supply while leaving LH with the task of adjusting the development plan depending on the outcome of the UNESCO review.
LH recently released the preliminary specifications for the "Seoul Taeneung Public Housing District Integrated Urban and Architectural Plan Design Competition," according to industry officials on the 18th. By beginning preparations about five months ahead of the district designation target set for March next year, LH is moving quickly on the follow-up steps needed to deliver 6,800 homes. An official at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) said it is effectively the first case in which the simultaneous handling of various procedures announced in the Aug. 13 package is actually being carried out.
In the Aug. 13 package, MOLIT 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, pursuing district designation and district planning at the same time and beginning basic surveys before designation.
The key is breaking away from the sequential model in which each stage waits for the previous permits to be finalized. Public housing districts typically proceed from district designation to the integrated urban and architectural plan design competition, district plan approval, and then compensation and construction. The third-phase new towns are a representative example. The first large-scale housing site to break that order was the Seoripul district in Seocho-gu, which covers 2.21 million square meters and 18,000 homes. LH issued the Seoripul design competition last December before district designation, and the area was designated as a district two months later, in February this year.
Taeneung goes a step further, running three procedures at once: district designation, the design competition and the World Heritage impact assessment. The National Heritage Committee conditionally approved LH's heritage impact assessment report in August, but the UNESCO review has not been completed. The competition is also being launched five months ahead of the March 2027 district designation target.
Uncertainties remain. If UNESCO calls for revisions, that could lead to changes in the plan or delays in the schedule. If the number of floors or units changes, the design conditions presented earlier could also change. A study commissioned by LH and released in 2023 recommended capping building heights at six to eight floors. The scope of work reflects these circumstances. It calls for analyzing the sightlines between the Joseon royal tombs of Taeneung and Gangneung and the project site to determine building heights and the skyline, and for drawing up guidelines for building and landscape design in line with the World Heritage impact assessment.
The Taeneung golf course was announced as a site for 10,000 homes in the Aug. 4 package in 2020, later scaled back to 6,800, and has gone six years without district designation because of the World Heritage issue. The government aims to follow the March 2027 district designation with district plan approval in 2028 and the start of construction in September 2029. Because the outcome of the cultural heritage assessment is needed, MOLIT plans to sign the actual contract for this competition at the time of district designation. A MOLIT official said the release of the preliminary specifications is intended to notify the market in advance so that bidders can prepare.