Korea’s latest tourism project is a plan to create a gigantic city on the islands of Yongyu-Muui in the port of Incheon. This enormous city will be located close to the Incheon International Airport, so as to target the 5.7 million passengers that pass through every year. If they manage to pull this 8-city project off, it will be the world’s largest tourism plan, and cities like Dubai and Las Vegas won’t hold a candle to it. This extravagant city is set to span 80 square kilometers and feature a mega strip, which would be 200m high, 880m wide, and 3.3km long. The plan is for the city to contain luxury hotels, condominiums, casinos, theme parks, shopping centers, and a Formula 1 racing track; because, really, how can a city be complete without a racetrack. While this covers all the generic things that can be found in Dubai, Las Vegas, Singapore or Macau, what will make this city extraordinary is the medical tourism in “healing town” and entertainment in “hallyu” town. Vice-chairman Park Seong Hyun of Eightcity Co, the project’s developers, has said, “It will become the world’s top city that has the creativity of Dubai, convention centers and casinos of Las Vegas and Macau, as well as the shopping centers and financial hubs of Hong Kong and Singapore.”
So far, Eightcity Co has received $3.8 billion from South Korean investors and UK’s Sandbar Development Corporation. This sum of money does not even begin to put a dent in the $264 billion that the project will cost. If the project does manage to finish as planned in 2030, let’s hope that it doesn’t go through the same financial crisis that Dubai did in 2007.
[Theaustralian]
Korea plans a $264 billion futuristic city
