Following the implementation of the First Five-Year Economic Development Plan in the 1960s, Korean society experienced rapid industrialization and urbanization, which intensified population concentration in large cities—particularly Seoul—and aggr...
Following the implementation of the First Five-Year Economic Development Plan in the 1960s, Korean society experienced rapid industrialization and urbanization, which intensified population concentration in large cities—particularly Seoul—and aggravated the housing shortage. In response, the Seoul Metropolitan Government sought to address housing problems through the physical expansion of the city. In 1963, the urban planning area was expanded in two stages to include the northeastern districts and areas south of the Han River. In this process, Gwacheon-myeon in Siheung County, Gyeonggi Province, was incorporated into Seoul’s urban planning area as part of a long-term metropolitan expansion strategy and was later designated as a site for state-led new town development.
Unlike typical residential developments within Seoul, Gwacheon New Town was conceived as an administrative city following plans for the construction of Seoul Grand Park and the Second Government Complex. With the establishment of the Gwacheon New Town Development Plan in 1979, a planned urban development aimed at relocating government officials and dispersing Seoul’s population was launched in earnest, and the Korea National Housing Corporation (KNHC) was designated as the sole developer. This designation granted the KNHC an unprecedented opportunity to plan and supply not merely housing complexes but the overall residential structure and housing typologies of an entire city.
Since its establishment in 1962, the KNHC had primarily focused on supplying public housing for low-income households and improving substandard housing. From the 1970s onward, it contributed to alleviating housing shortages in major cities through large-scale apartment developments. In Gwacheon New Town, however, the distinctive condition of an administrative city primarily intended for central government officials created an experimental setting in which the KNHC could more actively realize its planned and ideological vision of urban housing. Consequently, Gwacheon New Town was endowed with a dual character as both an administrative city and a garden city, featuring extensive green corridors, a pedestrian-oriented transportation system, and the parallel provision of diverse housing types.
This study aims to analyze the housing development process undertaken by the KNHC in Gwacheon New Town during the 1970s and 1980s and to clarify its characteristics and significance through comparison with housing supply cases in Seoul and neighboring areas during the same period. The analysis focuses on housing type composition, unit size and layout, and strategies for responding to changes in lifestyles.
The findings reveal three major characteristics of housing development in Gwacheon New Town. First, the city featured a mixed arrangement of apartments, row houses, and detached houses, with a wide range of unit sizes from 7.5 pyeong to over 40 pyeong. This reflects the KNHC’s intention to accommodate diverse housing demands at the urban scale amid growing concerns over the standardization of residential environments caused by the rapid spread of apartment housing in the 1970s. Such diversity in housing types and sizes later served as a reference model for housing composition in subsequent new towns.
Second, experimental efforts to respond to and lead changes in lifestyles were actively pursued. Innovations such as increasing the number of bathrooms within the same unit size, spatial configurations that considered privacy, the conversion of maid’s rooms into multipurpose utility spaces, and the introduction of skip-floor designs demonstrate how shifts in family structure and lifestyles were reflected in residential space. Additionally, experiments with environmental technologies, including the use of solar energy, can be evaluated as attempts to explore future housing possibilities within the social and technological context of the time.
Third, due to its character as an administrative city, Gwacheon New Town actively supplied medium- and large-sized housing units. This contrasts with the limited provision of large units in large-scale housing complexes in Seoul during the same period and illustrates how the state partially accommodated social demands for improved housing standards and larger dwelling sizes among the middle class.
Housing development in Gwacheon New Town later served as an important reference for the first-generation new towns in the Seoul metropolitan area, such as Bundang, Ilsan, and Sanbon. In this regard, the housing development of Gwacheon New Town can be understood as a significant experiment in which the state explored various values required of urban housing—such as housing type composition, spatial arrangement, qualitative residential experience, and performance improvement—while seeking prototypes for future housing in preparation for large-scale new town development from the 1980s onward.