Seoul to add 100,000 sq. meters of green space to G-Valley industrial complex

G-Valley — the Guro and Gasan digital complexes in southwestern Seoul — has long been a gray industrial district where young workers clocked out and left without looking back. Now the city is working to turn it into a place where people want to stay.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced Tuesday that it has completed a 7,750-square-meter street-forest garden in Guro-gu, the first tangible result of its "Garden Valley Project" to transform the park-starved complex into a greener, more livable industrial district.

Mayor Oh Se-hoon visited the newly completed street-forest garden and a planned shared-garden site along Digital-ro in Guro-gu that afternoon, meeting with young workers and residents in the G-Valley area.

G-Valley is Seoul's flagship national industrial complex, covering 1.92 million square meters across Guro-dong in Guro-gu and Gasan-dong in Geumcheon-gu, and has been home to a large concentration of companies and young workers since the 1960s. Despite that density, parks and green space designated under urban planning regulations amount to in effect zero, and workers have long complained about the lack of places to rest or linger.

Oh visited G-Valley in December last year and said he had heard that young people were gathering as new workspaces opened in the Guro and Gasan digital complexes, "but there is a shortage of spaces where you can feel rest, culture and the arts — people say they don't want to stay." He pledged to "secure green spaces that citizens can enjoy together and transform the environment into one where people can work with a sense of joy."

The city is accelerating its broader push for green space under a "5-minute garden city" initiative, with plans to add 424 gardens this year alone.

The Garden Valley Project is a five-year initiative running through 2030 that aims to connect pockets of the industrial complex through a network of green corridors, converting the gray district into a verdant one. The city said that in the age of AI and information technology, a company's competitiveness increasingly depends on attracting and retaining talented young workers — making green space and rest areas throughout the complex essential to creating an environment where people work, relax and stay.

The project aims not only to expand green spaces where young workers and local residents can walk, rest and connect in their daily lives, but also to create an industrial-complex environment where companies and talent choose to remain.

The city plans to create a total of 100,000 square meters of green space, comprising 40,140 square meters of street-forest gardens using street trees and ground-level plantings, and 60,909 square meters of shared gardens that will repurpose aging privately owned public open spaces into garden areas.

The first phase is the Guro-gu street-forest garden. Spanning 7,750 square meters across six road corridors including Digital-ro, it is the first attempt to transform the complex's barren pedestrian zones into green rest areas. A total of 183,600 plants were installed, including canopy and shrub species such as zelkova, panicle hydrangea, golden euonymus and blue angel juniper, as well as perennials and flowering plants including gaura, veronica and variegated hosta.

Pocket gardens have also been installed at high-traffic spots near subway stations, while planter-style gardens have been placed on artificial ground where conventional planting is not feasible.

In the second half of this year, the city will break ground on an additional 10,410-square-meter street-forest garden along five road corridors near Gasan Digital 1-ro in Geumcheon-gu, with completion expected in November.

Alongside the street-forest gardens, the city plans to roll out shared gardens in stages. The shared-garden program renovates aging privately owned public open spaces and expands their green coverage by up to 50 percent. Starting with nine sites in Guro-gu and Geumcheon-gu in the second half of this year, the city aims to complete a total of 68 shared gardens covering 60,909 square meters by 2030.

"The Garden Valley Project is a new urban innovation initiative that transforms the industrial complex from a place simply for working into a green space where citizens can stay, walk, rest and enjoy the vitality of everyday life," Oh said. "By expanding gardens and green space through 2030, we will turn G-Valley — once a symbol of the gray city — into Seoul's representative green industrial complex and a landmark of Seoul as a world-class garden city."