Why Urban Planners are Beefing with Korean Apartment Complexes

I was reading some editorials and stuff, and apparently, they are super critical of Korean apartments.

It’s not just because they look ugly; they are critical specifically because they are "complexes" (Danji). They argue that the reason these Korean apartment "complexes" became established as the middle-class housing standard is...

...it's because of the gated community feature. The pleasant sidewalks, playgrounds, gardens, parking spots, and green spaces inside the complex—those are things the government/public sector should originally invest in and build. But since public residential infrastructure in Korea is weak (think regular neighborhoods: lack of parking, lack of green space, wires above ground, no sidewalks), people solved this by using private money (the apt complex Danji). The experts' perspective is: Why are these gated communities—a housing model that developed in places like Southeast Asia or Central/South America where security is lacking—now thriving in Korea? That’s their main beef.

Secondly, it’s a disaster for the urban ecosystem. Essentially, the entire apartment complex is treated as one giant building. One structure takes up a massive chunk of urban space, and unless it's all redeveloped simultaneously, all the blocks age at the exact same rate. If you have to redevelop it all at once later, good luck getting in unless you have huge capital.

People made massive profits tearing down 5-story Jugeong (public housing) apartments and rebuilding them into 30-story towers, but what happens to those 30-story ones in 50 years? Do we have to crank them up to 60 stories? If you think about it that way, the future looks pretty shaky.

There’s a reason why Western countries force developers to break condos down into smaller block units, even if they have to. Large-scale complexes are an urban ecological disaster and merely the joint project of businessmen focused only on short-term profits, according to the editorials and books.