The Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) has established and implemented a set of standards for the three-dimensional use of space in a move designed to enable more flexible urban planning.
The Standards for the Three-Dimensional Designation of Urban Planning Facilities aim to enable more efficient use of limited urban land and expand transportation infrastructure. Under the new standards, land that has been difficult to develop due to planned roads will be available for more flexible use.
Even though a road might only ever occupy a specific vertical slice of airspace or ground, existing rules would lock up the entire land parcel, preventing any other use of the space above or below it.
Under the new standards, rather than designating the entire space occupied by a road as a protected urban planning facility, only a specified vertical section and spatial extent of a three-dimensional road is designated.
This allows transportation infrastructure - such as roads - to be built above privately owned land, while the space beneath the road can be used for other purposes such as parking.
In effect, the new regulation lets the public sector – which is the road - and the private sector - whatever is built underneath – to share and use the same land parcel simultaneously, rather than one use excluding the other.
Three-dimensional road designation had previously been constrained because roads serve public functions and their potential need for future expansion has also had to be factored in, meaning the city had to balance flexibility against keeping enough reserve capacity for a road to be widened or altered later.
SMG says it collected input from relevant internal departments and analysed applicable case studies before finalising the detailed standards.
The City’s announcement said the goal of the new rules was to minimise confusion in private-sector projects and enhance the predictability of administrative procedures.
Seoul also plans to provide greater support to facilitate the flexible application of the system to major urban renewal initiatives, including the City’s Fast-Track Integrated Planning and Moa Town projects, helping accelerate housing supply and related development projects.
#IndustryNews