Several years ago, while walking through the winding, hillside paths of Uam-dong in Busan, I saw a young couple enjoying the late morning on the porch of an old house. They looked out of place in this geriatric neighborhood, but it was easy to see why they had chosen this place to live. By buying a small, inexpensive abode, they could live rent-free until they became more financially stable and invest in something larger and more comfortable.
That house is gone now. It was knocked down with all the others in the neighborhood, and just last month, a towering apartment complex opened in the same spot. But remembering that couple and their “starter home” made me think: Why couldn’t more new families have done the same thing and preserved that original neighborhood?
This is a question I ask myself as I walk around my own dying neighborhood. It was built in the the 1970s and 1980s with large, hopeful houses, built for the people pouring in from the farms to power Korea’s industrialization. But when the focus of Korea’s economy morphed to service sector growth, these houses became less attractive to new buyers. And as the original owners die off or move out, there is no one to take them and keep this neighborhood thriving.
These homes became less attractive for three reasons. First, modern home buyers have, or plan to have, their own vehicle. And since older houses were built at a time of low car ownership, few have garages or driveways. Some old neighborhoods have created shared multi-level parking areas in empty lots, but even those are accessed via narrow lanes that make two-way traffic difficult.
Young home buyers also like green space. Two generations ago, the importance of green space was probably lost on people jumping at the chance to leave farm life behind, and the housing they needed then certainly reflected this. But today, people value shared parks. In a Quartz magazine article about migrants to the planned city of Sejong, Isabella Steger writes that people loved their proximity to green space. One young mother, commenting on the city she had moved from, said, “when I stepped out of my apartment block, it was just a parking lot.”
A third problem with older homes is their excessive size. These multi-level, multi-room houses were not only beneficial for the larger (and extended) families of the time; they also offered a means of acquiring side income by renting out rooms to single workers or students. In the future, however, such layouts will not be beneficial for childless and unmarried homebuyers. Currently, city governments are focusing on constructing more single-person apartments.
In the future, we should see more high-rise apartment buildings with underground parking. These towers will not take up more surface space, so expect more urban parks in your area. They will be great places to talk with people outside your solitary domicile.
