[Sponsored Report] Songdo IBD :Asia’s rising metropolis

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[Sponsored Report] Songdo IBD :Asia’s rising metropolis

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a scene from CNN’s ‘The Gateway’ program in which Becky Anderson interviews Stan Gale, chairman of NSIC to hear about the development of Songdo IBD.


Songdo International Business District (Songdo IBD) is full of investment news from local and foreign companies and there are continuous cultural events. The district is being recognized by overseas media as a model for future city developments as well as being a leader in planning environment-friendly cities.

America’s famous broadcasting station CNN has also shown an interest in Songdo IBD, with “The Gateway” program examining Songdo IBD whilst visiting Incheon International Airport.

The Gateway is a series which reports on transportation hubs around the world and during September it reported on Incheon. In the first series, it introduced Songdo IBD saying, “It is the general Aerotropolis which is a new city concept as the physical speed of global business and the accessibility to the airport is getting more and more important. As the population movement relation is also changing quickly in these times, the answer is city development.”

Aerotropolis is a new kind of city that is developed with the airport as the center.

The program consisted of four parts and CNN’s Becky Anderson explained what Songdo IBD is and how important its location is, being just 20 minutes from Incheon airport.

She also interviewed Stan Gale, NSIC chairman, and listened as he talked about the city’s development from the initial phase. They also looked around parts of the city.

A video clip captured some of the various landmarks of Songdo IBD which include Songdo Central Park, the sharp First World, the Northeast Asia Trade Tower and Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea.

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a scene showing some of the landmark buildings of Songdo IBD is part of Discovery Channel’s ‘Mega World.’


The show also has interviews with businessmen who frequently go on business trips abroad while staying at Songdo, introducing the accessibility to the airport in addition to the good living environment with regard to the golf club, international schools and leisure facilities.

The Gateway aired every Wednesday during September and dealt with Songdo IBD as the main subject along with Incheon International Airport, one of the more important in Northeast Asia, and Korea’s first free economic zone, Incheon Free Economic Zone. There will also be a special program in October and Songdo IBD will be in the spotlight again.

The new term Aerotropolis is a new city development concept that became widely known after the book ‘Aerotropolis: The Way We Live Next,’ written by world famous professor John Kasarda and former journalist Greg Linsay, was published. In this book, Songdo IBD is presented as the city that has perfectly realized the concept of aerotropolis.

Songdo is also receiving attention from the famous Wall Street Journal. In their ‘How to Build a Greener City’ special report in September 12, there was an article about Songdo IBD. Michael Totty, the writer of the article, wrote that as the population of cities is expected to growth rapidly during the next 20 years more environment- friendly cities should be developed and it focused on Songdo IBD as a ‘high technology environment.’

There is a 25-kilometer bicycle road in the city and the master plan of Songdo IBD is to make all of the different parts of the city, work, domestic and leisure facilities easily reachable within 15 minutes of each other. Also highlighted was the effective local heating system that can take over the current electricity or natural gas system.

In the meantime, in August the world famous Discovery Channel featured Songdo on its ‘Mega World’ Korea section as it highlighted Songdo IBD as the rising star of Asia.

The program introduced Songdo IBD as the historical scale of private city development programs and showed the process of the reclamation project of the West Sea to construct the city, the major landmark buildings such as the Northeast Asia Trade Tower and the high technology network environment such as Cisco’s Telepresence and the garbage center handling system.

Interest in Songdo IBD from overseas media will continue in October.

America’s public radio station NPR (National Public Radio) will air a show on Songdo IBD in early October.

Also America’s public broadcasting service (PBS) program ‘Zero Energy America’ and ABC’s local network KGO-TV’s Emmy Award winning program ‘Beyond the Headlines’ will deal with Songdo in their shows. These programs will be dealing with the fact that Songdo is able to continuously develop yet maintain its efforts when it comes to energy conservation.Stan Gale, chairman of NSIC commented, “Songdo IBD is a city project where no one has seen such huge scale of land reclamation from sea to build a city and that is why the overseas media is showing such an interest. This is proving that Songdo IBD’s status is rising as the most active economic and cultural hub in the world.”

* Songdo IBD

Songdo IBD is the key district within the Songdo International city and is a private development project in a 5,719,008-square-meter site that cost 24 trillion won to develop.

It is currently being developed to provide the best quality for business, residential and living infrastructure. Facilities that are complete include Chadwick International School, Central Park, Jack Nicklaus Golf Club, Convensia as well as hotels, residential areas and business facilities.

The Songdo IBD which is within 20 minutes of Incheon International Airport is expected to be completed in 2018.

By Lee Ji-hyun [concordia@joongang.co.kr]
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