Plans unveiled for high-tech '10-minute city' in Seoul

Now, a gaggle of architects is planning an much more formidable neighborhood in South Korea's capital, Seoul: a 10-minute metropolis.Dubbed "Project H1," the event is about to rework an previous industrial web site into an interconnected "smart" metropolis. Combining eight residential buildings with co-working places of work and research areas, the 125-acre district can also be set to deal with entertainment venues, health facilities, swimming swimming pools and even hydroponic city farms.

Designed by Dutch structure agency UNStudio and backed by Hyundai Development Company (an actual property agency owned by the conglomerate behind the automotive maker of the identical identify), the neighborhood may even be utterly car-free. A press launch for the mission claimed that "all the conveniences of the city" will probably be inside a 10-minute stroll of individuals's houses.In an announcement, UNStudio co-founder Ben van Berkel mentioned that residents' "daily life experience" is the mission's "top priority." "We do this through the inclusion of a rich density of uplifting, curated on-site experiences that provide an extensive range of options for how they can spend their living, working and leisure time, thereby also saving them the time needed to travel elsewhere in the city -- because with time that is saved, more time is created," he's quoted as saying.

A spokesperson for UNStudio confirmed that mission has been green-lit however didn't disclose when it's prone to break floor. For now, a series of CGI renderings trace at how the neighborhood will look, with public plazas, gardens, inexperienced roofs and "nature zones" related by pedestrian walkways.The architects additionally mentioned that clear vitality will probably be generated on web site, whereas methods to seize and retailer rain are being designed to scale back water use.The "15-minute city" idea was first proposed by French-Colombian educational Carlos Moreno in 2016, and was more not too long ago popularized by Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, who proposed making the French capital a "ville du quart d'heure" -- a quarter-hour metropolis -- throughout her latest reelection marketing campaign.

Writing in the educational journal Smart Cities earlier this 12 months, Moreno mentioned, "The emergence of this pandemic exposed the vulnerability of cities ... and the need for a radical re-thinking, where innovative measures need to be tailored to ensure that urban residents are able to cope and continue with their basic activities, including cultural ones, to ensure that cities remain both resilient and livable in the short and long terms." He added that "further research is now warranted to showcase how the idea and its elements can be replicated in cities within the global south."