Songdo, city of the Future
Do you know Songdo International Business District (SIBD) ?
It is a new Smart City or Ubiquitous built from scratch on 1,500 acres of reclaimed land along Incheon’s waterfront. The city is claiming to be one of the most high tech cities in the world and one of the best new aerotropolises. It is still in the process of being built however, there are large sections that have already opened, the project has started almost 20 years ago.
Schools, hospitals, apartments, office buildings and cultural amenities are to be built in the district. But some aspects of Songdo are taken from other cities in the world such as the large central park (New York City), wide avenues (Paris), waterways (Venice), and a convention center inspired by the Sydney Opera House.
Songdo Convensia
Actually Songdo is more than 50% complete, the city is on track to be one of the greenest cities in the world, with more than 40% of the city devoted to parkland, including the 100-acre Central Park.
It was built in 2009 and it’s the first park in Korea to use water that is withdrawn from the sea. There are some things you can enjoy, so it’s a great place to spend some time with your family, friends or even yourself in the city. Also the night view of the park is great! You can feel nice breeze at night.
The park consists of 5 parts: Promenade, Sculpture garden, Mountain strolling garden, Long meadow and terrace garden. Each part has its own character.
Songdo Central Park
If you have time, you can pay a visit to The Tri-Bowl, it was built to commemorate the 2009 Global Fair and Festival by Incheon City. It has no pillars and incorporates 3D curves.
The building is located in a pond with a 80m and a length of 40m with one basement and three ground floors. It resembles 3 bowls floating on the water.
Tri-Bowl
Video screens that connect remote residents to medical care and pneumatic tubes that suck waste to be converted into energy – science fiction is becoming a reality for residents of Songdo. Being a green city, Songdo will also use radically less water and electricity than a traditional city of the same size and emit two-thirds less greenhouse gases. The United Nations recently announced that its Global climate Fund will be based in a tower block built specifically for international agencies, and 500 employees and their families will move to Songdo, starting this year. The distance any resident has to walk or bike to a store, business or school has been carefully calculated, so that cars are not needed. By the time the city is finished in 2017, it will have 65,000 residents and 300,000 daily commuters, mainly from Incheon and Seoul. But for now, Songdo is more like a better place to visit than to live, because of the lack of activity and variety compared to the center of Seoul.
Places to visit in Songdo
In conclusion, I have to say that Songdo isn’t an ordinary new city of South Korea at all. Everything, what a city needs, is there.But everything could have been executed a little bit better.The development of the city is slow. However, it was built from scratch. There wasn’t even land before there. The majority of places has a great design. Sometimes the design seems to be more important than practical aspects but if you wanna find out by yourself, take a tour to Songdo !