Looking Around Sejong: Buildings

The city of Sejong has a very unique appearance that neither Zoë and I have ever seen before. We find ourselves staring into the distance at the buildings, the parks, and the bridges. It is truly a beautiful city and we just wanted to take the time to write about the aesthetics of Sejong. I will try and choose one aspect of the city for each post to make sure I don't write a crazy long post.

Sejong was designed to be a big city that will become the administrative capital of Korea. There is tons of space because we are located out in the country side. One of our coworkers described Sejong as a "city in the countryside", which we have found to be very accurate. If you drive just outside of Sejong in any direction there are farms and plenty of untouched green space. The location gives Sejong plenty of room to expand to make sure there is room for all of the future inhabitants.

Our apartment is located on the outskirts of Sejong. Just south of us is a bridge that is a main highway to get to Daejeon, which is one of the top 5 biggest cities in Korea. Because of our location in Sejong, we have to travel a good distance to get anywhere of importance. We are also close to areas that are in the beginning stages of construction and we are excited to see what kinds of changes we will see in the future.

Buildings

All the buildings in Sejong are big. Everything is connect. It is very rare to see a totally detached home or store. Koreans like to use their space efficiently. If you look around most buildings are large in size similar to a typical office building in America. The first 2 or 3 floors of every building is dedicated to businesses. Each business has about the same space as a store would have in a strip mall. Above these businesses are the apartments, which can go up another 5-10 floors (our building is 8 floors).

The stores all have the same layout and it is hard to find a store that is truly unique. It is also fun to see how different types of business use their space, especially car dealerships.

Some buildings are solely dedicated to either businesses or apartments. The buildings that have businesses only are usually located in busier areas and have tons of signs on the windows of the building. The apartment buildings are very easy to spot as well because they end up being twice as tall as anything else. The also have big numbers (the black letters on the side of the buildings) on the outside so it is easy to spot the address. 



The other thing to point out is that a lot of the buildings here are empty. Sejong is a growing city and it is nowhere near populated to its max capacity. So when we are walking around we will find many buildings like the one above that are totally empty but ready for occupants whenever they arrive. I will explain more in the next post in which I will write about the construction in Sejong.