Seoul 2016?

On the right we have:

1) Artist's rendering of the new Gwanghwamun area at night

2) The downtown Sejong-no and Gwanghwamun area. The redesign will turn the downtown boulevard into a pedestrian-friendly leisure space incorporating the neighborhood's history and culture.

This is supposedly how it will look by June of 2009. Most likely, at that time I will still be in Korea. And this looks pretty cool.

I will certainly hop in and out of Seoul to take pictures of the construction as it occurs.

But the one below is substantially cooler. It is allegedly what the Yongsan International Business District will look like by 2016. And it looks pretty cool, but far too "modernistic" to be Seoul.

1) No smog
2) No bicycle riders on sidewalks
3) No apparent hideous traffic jams.

Still.. it is amazing to look a this kind of city planning, and such an ambitious timetable, and compare it to the horrid designs we come up with in the US and the epic amount of time it takes us to complete them.

How we coming on that Twin-Towers replacement?

But if Seoul does look like that?

It will be pretty cool to look at from across the Han.