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Originally Posted by Crawford
But the point is that South Korea is a tiny country with a declining population. It has one of the lowest birthrates on the planet and almost no immigration. It doesn't really seem to be a place where megatowers make any sense, because it has a small population now, and a future with an even smaller population.
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Wrong.
South Korea's population is still growing, albeit slowly at about 200k per year despite the low birthrate. This includes significant immigration from China. Yes, there are
Chinatowns in Seoul and Busan. Korea isn't quite so xenophobic as Japan to not allow immigration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demogra...of_South_Korea
South Korea has a population density 50% higher than Japan(1200/square mile vs 800/square mile).
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0934666.html
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That's why I was wondering if there was some govt. impetus behind these proposals, like one sees in Dubai or China.
I mean, neighboring Japan has three times the population, a higher birthrate, and higher per capita wealth, but they don't build such crazy stuff. There has to be some non-market impetus behind these projects, I would think.
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There was plenty of crazy stuff proposed in Japan during the 80's boom years (Aeropolis, X-seed, etc), and they just finished building the tallest observation tower in the world(Tokyo Skytree).
As for non market impetus, like I said, the Korea companies, particularly Hyundai and Lotte want to make a mark with their towers. Quite a few of them when originally proposed could have been WTB. Also, did you miss where I said
Quote:
Originally Posted by scalziand
Other projects like the Incheon twins and Dream Hub/Tripple1 were governement backed, but the government (perhaps wisely, perhaps not) decided to drop the backing and those projects are dead.
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So yes, there certainly is a bit of 'non-market impetus' to these projects. But they are not entirely unjustifiable. That is why most of them were canned, and only a couple are moving forward.