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Seoul tests its 1,300% floor area ratio on two plots of just over 5,000 square meters
Seoul has named the first six sites in a hub program it wants to grow to 70 locations by 2030. Two of them can be built at a floor area ratio of up to 1,300 percent on plots just over 5,000 square meters.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Seoul said on the 15th it had selected six growth and neighborhood hubs, two under its growth-hub mixed-use development program and four under its growth-potential revitalization program.
- The first mixed-use pilot is a 5,475.1-square-meter plot at 680-1 Yeoksam-dong in Gangnam District, inside the Seonjeongneung Station transfer area and adjoining Eonju-ro.
- The four revitalization pilots are at Seongnae-dong in Gangdong, Chang-dong in Dobong, Junggok-dong in Gwangjin and Doksan-dong in Geumcheon, all on arterial roads outside station areas.
- The city will form a cooperative body for each site, draw up plans by December and begin administrative procedures in January.
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Why it matters
- constraint The pilot decides very little about Seoul's supply: the volume sits in the 28 mixed-use and 42 revitalization sites still to come, and 64 of the 70 have no address yet.
- decision Owners inside the six named areas now have a dated process to join or sit out, since plans are drafted this year and administrative procedures open in the new year.
- precedent Six arterial roads designated as growth-potential corridors, plus the Dongdaemun Design Plaza and Chang-dong-Sanggye areas flagged as recommended growth-hub zones, tell buyers where the city intends to support the next conversions.
- exposure The Chang-dong scheme's value is tied to infrastructure the city does not control alone, because it is being linked to the GTX-C line and a transfer center at Chang-dong Station.
Thirteen times the plot area is a large multiple on a small plot. The Yeoksam-dong site's 5,475.1 square meters carries about 71,176 square meters of floor space at that ceiling [1], and Jayang-dong's 5,132.6 square meters about 66,724 [2]. Between them the two pilots are 10,607.7 square meters of Seoul [4] and roughly 137,900 square meters of permitted floor space [3].
The city did not publish the existing permitted density at either site, or what it will ask of developers in return for the uplift [15]. That difference is what a buyer of either plot would price.
The intent is legible from the geography. Seoul says it will extend the Gangnam business district, now concentrated along Teheran-ro, out to Eonju-ro and the area around Seonjeongneung Station [5]. It says it will develop the Jayang-dong plot into a hub for the northeast, linking the advanced industries, young talent and cultural and commercial functions of the Seongsu and Konkuk University areas [6].
"We will upgrade the downtown and wider metropolitan centers into growth hubs that lead Seoul's future," said Kim Chang-gyu, head of the Urban Space Division at the Seoul Metropolitan Government, "and turn the arterial roadsides between stations into neighborhood hubs that revive residents' daily lives and local economies, reshaping all of Seoul into a densely multi-centered city" [14].
Two sites are about 7 percent of the 28 growth-hub mixed-use developments the city wants by 2030 [6]. In my view the figure worth underwriting is whatever the site plans actually grant, plus the public contribution attached. The 1,300 percent is stated as a ceiling that can be applied based on general commercial zoning [2], and no project has been granted it yet [15]. The counter-thesis is simple enough. 28 mixed-use hubs at this permitted density is a deep enough pipeline that the size of the pilot stops mattering, and whoever buys land near the named transfer stations first buys it cheapest. I would be wrong about the pilot's significance if the plans grant the full ceiling at both sites with a light contribution. The rest of the program would then be priced off that.
What to watch
- Whether the four neighborhood-hub pilots get published density figures of their own, or only the two mixed-use sites do.
- Whether the Chang-dong scheme's schedule tracks the GTX-C line and the Chang-dong Station intermodal transfer center.
- Which additional mixed-use sites Seoul names once administrative procedures open, and whether the recommended zones convert.