The authorities of South Korea decided to build a fantastic city of the future on the shores of the Yellow Sea. The country's government has signed a cooperation agreement with major investors and construction companies to create a project for a huge seaside city called Songdo. More than $ 40 billion was spent on the construction of the world's first "smart" city, but now Songdo looks more like an abandoned settlement than a busy metropolis.
Futuristic Songdo was supposed to be the first "smart" city on the planet, which was planned to be created from scratch. Designers and architects had mind-blowing ambitions when developing a plan for a settlement from the future: for the construction of Songdo it was necessary to drain more than 600 hectares of swamps, on the vacated territory to erect huge residential quarters, which were to be inhabited by about half a million people. The plan included several dozen residential high-rise buildings and office skyscrapers, parks, playgrounds and parking lots. Each of the constructed buildings had to have cameras and motion sensors that would reduce crime to minimum levels and enable services to respond quickly to extraordinary increases: accidents, fires and offenses.
Pedestrian and automobile roads were planned to be built so that in 20-30 minutes the resident had the opportunity to get to any point of the city. The metropolis of the future had to take energy from solar panels and hydroelectric power plants. Planners and architects wanted rainwater collectors to be installed throughout Songdo Square, which would be used to clean up streets and irrigate lawns in times of drought. Throughout the city, they wanted to install pneumatic systems for the collection and sorting of garbage waste for efficient and quick recycling.
However, all the plans that were conceived by the Koreans did not materialize.
Developers promised that they would fully complete the construction of the fantastic city by 2015, but problems arose, because of which the deadlines had to be extended until 2018. The new city was unable to attract a large number of residents, as Songdo did not build museums, amusement parks, recreation areas and shopping and entertainment centers with cinemas, restaurants and shops. What's more, the cost of housing in this empty city was much higher than the national average. Many developers became disillusioned with the project and stopped working on it when they saw that there were few interested Korean citizens in their brainchild. Construction was frozen, and now in Songdo you can see many houses, the work on which is not finished.
Now no more than 100 thousand people live on the territory of the city. This number is extremely low for South Korean megacities: in neighboring Incheon, for example, more than 3 million people live. The city authorities continue to work on attracting residents and tourists to Sondgo, building quarters for foreigners, but the city is unlikely to be able to become the metropolis of the future, which was planned a few years ago.
