Latest news with #apartment
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Americans may aspire to single-family homes, but in South Korea, apartments are king
For many Americans, the apartment where 29-year-old IT specialist Lee Chang-hee lives might be the stuff of nightmares. Located just outside the capital of Seoul, the building isn't very tall — just 16 stories — by South Korean standards, but the complex consists of 36 separate structures, which are nearly identical except for the building number displayed on their sides. The 2,000-plus units come in the same standardized dimensions found everywhere in the country (Lee lives in a '84C,' which has 84 square meters, or about 900 square feet, of floor space) and offer, in some ways, a ready-made life. The amenities scattered throughout the campus include a rock garden with a fake waterfall, a playground, a gym, an administration office, a senior center and a 'moms cafe.' But this, for the most part, is South Korea's middle-class dream of home ownership — its version of a house with the white picket fence. 'The bigger the apartment complex, the better the surrounding infrastructure, like public transportation, schools, hospitals, grocery stories, parks and so on,' Lee said. 'I like how easy it is to communicate with the neighbors in the complex because there's a well-run online community.' Most in the country would agree: Today, 64% of South Korean households live in such multifamily housing, the majority of them in apartments with five or more stories. Such a reality seems unimaginable in cities like Los Angeles, which has limited or prohibited the construction of dense housing in single-family zones. 'Los Angeles is often seen as an endless tableau of individual houses, each with their own yard and garden,' Max Podemski, an L.A.-based urban planner, wrote in The Times last year. 'Apartment buildings are anathema to the city's ethos.' In recent years, the price of that ethos has become increasingly apparent in the form of a severe housing shortage. In the city of Los Angeles, where nearly 75% of all residential land is zoned for stand-alone single-family homes, rents have been in a seemingly endless ascent, contributing to one of the worst homelessness crises in the country. As a remedy, the state of California has ordered the construction of more than 450,000 new housing units by 2029. The plan will almost certainly require the building of some form of apartment-style housing, but construction has lagged amid fierce resistance. Read more: South Korea celebrates the transformative power of 'Squid Game' Sixty years ago, South Korea stood at a similar crossroads. But the series of urban housing policies it implemented led to the primacy of the apartment, and in doing so, transformed South Korean notions of housing over the course of a single generation. The results of that program have been mixed. But in one important respect, at least, it has been successful: Seoul, which is half the size of the city of L.A., is home to a population of 9.6 million — compared with the estimated 3.3 million people who live here. For Lee, the trade-off is a worthwhile one. In an ideal world, she would have a garage for the sort of garage sales she's admired in American movies. 'But South Korea is a small country,' she said. 'It is necessary to use space as efficiently as possible.' Apartments, in her view, have spared her from the miseries of suburban housing. Restaurants and stores are close by. Easy access to public transportation means she doesn't need a car to get everywhere. 'Maybe it's because of my Korean need to have everything done quickly, but I think it'd be uncomfortable to live somewhere that doesn't have these things within reach at all times,' she said. 'I like to go out at night; I think it would be boring to have all the lights go off at 9 p.m.' *** Apartments first began appearing in South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s, as part of a government response to a housing crisis in the nation's capital — a byproduct of the era's rapid industrialization and subsequent urban population boom. In the 1960s, single-family detached dwellings made up around 95% of homes in the country. But over the following decade, as rural migrants flooded Seoul in search of factory work, doubling the population from 2.4 to 5.5 million, many in this new urban working class found themselves without homes. As a result, many of them settled in shantytowns on the city's outskirts, living in makeshift sheet-metal homes. The authoritarian government at the time, led by a former army general named Park Chung-hee, declared apartments to be the solution and embarked on a building spree that would continue under subsequent administrations. Eased height restrictions and incentives for construction companies helped add between 20,000 to 100,000 new apartment units every year. They were pushed by political leaders in South Korea as a high-tech modernist paradise, soon making them the most desirable form of housing for the middle and upper classes. Known as apateu, which specifically refers to a high-rise apartment building built as part of a larger complex — as distinct from lower stand-alone buildings — they symbolized Western cachet and upward social mobility. 'Around the late 1990s and early 2000s, almost every big-name celebrity at the time appeared in apartment commercials,' recalled Jung Heon-mok, an anthropologist at the Academy of Korean Studies who has studied the history of South Korean apartments. 'But the biggest reason that apartments proliferated as they did was because they were done at scale, in complexes of five buildings or more.' Read more: First came the heat. Then the lovebugs invaded Essential to the modern apateu are the amenities — such as on-site kindergartens or convenience stores — that allow them to function like miniature towns. This has also turned them into branded commodities and class signifiers, built by construction conglomerates like Samsung, and taking on names like 'castle' or 'palace.' (One of the first such branded apartment complexes was Trump Tower, a luxury development built in Seoul in the late 1990s by a construction firm that licensed the name of Donald Trump.) All of this has made the detached single-family home, for the most part, obsolete. In Seoul, such homes now make up just 10% of the housing stock. Among many younger South Koreans like Lee, they are associated with retirement in the countryside, or, as she puts it: for 'grilling in the garden for your grandkids.' *** This model has not been without problems. There are the usual issues that come with dense housing. In buildings with poor soundproofing, 'inter-floor noise' between units is such a universal scourge that the government runs a noise-related dispute resolution center while discouraging people from angrily confronting their neighbors, a situation that occasionally escalates into headline-making violence. Some apartment buildings have proved to be too much even for a country accustomed to unsentimentally efficient forms of housing. One 19-story, 4,635-unit complex built by a big-name apartment brand in one of the wealthiest areas of Seoul looks so oppressive that it has become a curiosity, mocked by some as a prison or chicken coop. The sheer number of apartments has prompted criticism of Seoul's skyline as sterile and ugly. South Koreans have described its uniform, rectangular columns as 'matchboxes.' And despite the aspirations attached to them, there is also a wariness about a culture where homes are built in such disposable, assembly line-like fashion. Many people here are increasingly questioning how this form of housing, with its nearly identical layouts, has shaped the disposition of contemporary South Korean society, often criticized by its own members as overly homogenized and lockstep. 'I'm concerned that apartments have made South Koreans' lifestyles too similar,' said Maing Pil-soo, an architect and urban planning professor at Seoul National University. 'And with similar lifestyles, you end up with a similar way of thinking. Much like the cityscape itself, everything becomes flattened and uniform.' Jung, the anthropologist, believes South Korea's apartment complexes, with their promise of an atomized, frictionless life, have eroded the more expansive social bonds that defined traditional society — like those that extended across entire villages — making its inhabitants more individualistic and insular. 'At the end of the day, apartments here are undoubtedly extremely convenient — that's why they became so popular,' he said. 'But part of that convenience is because they insulate you from the concerns of the wider world. Once you're inside your complex and in your home, you don't have to pay attention to your neighbors or their issues.' Read more: They didn't know they were citizens. Now they are expected to serve in the South Korean military Still, Jung says this uniformity isn't all bad. It is what made them such easily scalable solutions to the housing crisis of decades past. It is also, in some ways, an equalizing force. 'I think apartments are partly why certain types of social inequalities you see in the U.S. are comparatively less severe in South Korea,' he said. Though many branded apartment complexes now resemble gated communities with exclusionary homeowner associations, Jung points out that on the whole, the dominance of multifamily housing has inadvertently encouraged more social mixing between classes, a physical closeness that creates the sense that everyone is inhabiting the same broader space. Even Seoul's wealthiest neighborhoods feel, to an extent that is hard to see in many American cities, porous and accessible. Wealthier often means having a nicer apartment, but an apartment all the same, existing in the same environs as those in a different price range. 'And even though we occasionally use disparaging terms like 'chicken coop' to describe them, once you actually step inside one of those apartments, they don't feel like that at all,' Jung said. 'They really are quite comfortable and nice.' *** None of this, however, has been able to stave off Seoul's own present-day housing affordability crisis. The capital has one of the most expensive apartment prices in the world on a price-per-square-meter basis, ranking fourth after Hong Kong, Zurich and Singapore, and ahead of major U.S. cities like New York or San Francisco, according to a report published last month by Deutsche Bank. One especially brutal stretch recently saw apartment prices in Seoul double in four years. Part of the reason for this is that apartments, with their standardized dimensions, have effectively become interchangeable financial commodities: An apartment in Seoul is seen as a much more surefire bet than any stock, leading to intense real estate investment and speculation that has driven up home prices. 'Buying an apartment here isn't just buying an apartment. The equivalent in the U.S. would be like buying an ideal single-family home with a garage in the U.S., except that it comes with a bunch of NVIDIA shares,' said Chae Sang-wook, an independent real estate analyst. 'In South Korea, people invest in apateu for capital gains, not cash flow from rent.' Some experts predict that, as the country enters another era of demographic upheaval, the dominance of apartments will someday be no more. If births continue to fall as dramatically as they have done in recent years, South Koreans may no longer need such dense housing. The ongoing rise of single-person households, too, may chip away at a form of housing built to hold four-person nuclear families. But Chae is skeptical that this will happen anytime soon. He points out that South Koreans don't even like to assemble their own furniture, let alone fix their own cars — all downstream effects of ubiquitous apartment living. 'For now, there is no alternative other than this,' he said. 'As a South Korean, you don't have the luxury of choosing.' Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. Solve the daily Crossword
ABC News
18 hours ago
- Business
- ABC News
Beachside hotel, conference centre and apartments part of Tasmanian developer's latest plans
A Tasmanian developer has laid out his plans for a suite of new projects across the state, including a beachside hotel, apartment buildings, a conference centre and even a childcare centre. Errol Stewart, the businessman behind the Stewart Group and car dealership JMC, launched the plans — totalling more than $100 million in potential investment — in Launceston this week. But he foreshadowed the possibility of "significant delays" in the planning stages and said he would not pursue plans local communities oppose. The proposals include a $35 million hotel and apartment complex on the foreshore at Camdale, near Burnie, and residential apartment buildings in Hobart and Launceston, as well as a convention centre at Invermay in Launceston. Mr Stewart said the Burnie project was the "major" announcement of the suite of proposals. He said his company bought 3 hectares of coastal land from the Burnie City Council in 2024, where he intends to build the Strait Hotel. The land is directly across the Bass Highway from an existing JMC car dealership, which he said would also soon undergo a $3 million redevelopment. But, Mr Stewart said, the company was seeking feedback and engagement from the community before pressing ahead with the plans. "We'll be saying to the community, 'Do you think this is a good thing, do you really support it?'," he said. "And if the answer was a strong 'no', we'd have to revise it. Concerns are already being raised about the Strait Hotel, which would be built on a site which is known little penguin habitat. Penguin ecologist Perviz Marker said the Camdale penguin colony was a "good news story" as its population had grown by five times in the past 30 years. "I think this is a fantastic opportunity to leave it as a restored, rehabilitated site." Mr Stewart said he intended to leave half the site dedicated to the penguin colony, but Dr Marker said that would not be suitable as it was "still a loss of 50 per cent of the penguin habitat". The site is currently zoned for environmental management, and Mr Stewart said the company would be requesting a planning scheme amendment if the project received positive community feedback. In a post on Facebook, Burnie mayor Teeny Brumby said Mr Stewart's plans were "exciting". "Of course, there's still a body of work to be done including permits, rezoning, council applications, and environmental considerations," she said. "But the concept plans released yesterday offer a glimpse into something quite special for our city." Launceston Chamber of Commerce chief executive Alina Bain said Mr Stewart's plans outlined a "level of confidence in Tasmania and his optimism for the future". She said the proposal for a conference centre was exciting, as it would generate visitor numbers to the city, something particularly needed during the winter. Enthusiasm for a new conference centre in the city has been growing in recent years, and a demand study prepared for tourism body Visit Northern Tasmania earlier this year noted a shortage of accommodation and facilities in Launceston. Mr Stewart said his company would commit $10 million to such a conference centre, but estimated it would be a $25 million facility that would need government support. Ms Bain said it was great to see Mr Stewart "stepping up". "But we absolutely need to see all three levels of government to come together to develop this project," she said. "It would be a game-changer for the city, and we know that the figures support this." She said other facilities such as the Launceston airport would need to be upgraded, and that more hotel offerings in the city would also need to be developed. Mr Stewart's suite of plans includes residential apartment buildings across the state, including in Launceston and Burnie, but he believes demand is greatest in Hobart. There his plan is for the City Scape Towers — two five-storey apartment buildings on Campbell Street costed at $20 million. He said he expected demand would "ripple" throughout the state if the AFL stadium at Macquarie Point was realised. "We'll do our Hobart project irrespective of the outcome of the stadium, for sure, providing we can get a permit," Mr Stewart said. He said a possible development boom could be likened to the tourist lure Hobart's Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) had proved to be. "When MONA got going, everybody came down and said, 'We want to go to MONA,'" he said. "Then they jumped in their car, and they drove north and south and all over the place. And it was just [a] MONA effect that just rippled through the island. "And that'll be exactly the same … when and if we get the stadium up." But Mr Stewart said he was concerned about how the state's current "planning quagmire" may present challenges to his ambitions. He said he was hopeful that whichever party forms government next would cut red tape to allow for greater "development potential".
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
College Student Returns Home After a Month and Finds 2 Naked Strangers Living in His Apartment: Report
Attorneys suggested the apartment did not breach their contract with the Pennsylvania college student A Pittsburgh college student says he returned home after a month away to allegedly find two naked people in his apartment. Maverick Crupi, who attends the University of Pittsburgh, said he came across the two individuals upon returning to his unit at the SkyVue Apartments in June, according to CBS affiliate KDKA. Crupi said he quickly realized that many of his personal belongings were missing, and saw new pots and pans in the kitchen. Soon after, he ran into the first naked individual. "This lady, she's probably like 35, 40 [years old], just naked, walks out, looks at me and starts screaming," he recalled. ADVERTISEMENT Crupi claimed his former roommate had sublet his room, the outlet reported. But the college student said he was given no notice that this was taking place. There is a clause in the contract Crupi signed for the apartment that stated subletting "is allowed only when we expressly consent in writing.' It also said, "the remaining resident and replacement residents must sign an entirely new lease contract.' However, the outlet reported that Crupi signed what is known as a 'by-the-bed' lease and was only renting his room in the unit. According to KDKA, attorneys said SkyVue did not breach the contract. One of those attorneys, Daniel Stoner, said the subletting clause would have gone into effect if Crupi and his former roommate had signed a joint lease agreement. Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. SkyVue did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment. ADVERTISEMENT Now, Crupi is warning others to 'look at your contract' and 'look at the laws that are in the city' when it comes to leasing. 'Try to see if you're getting what you're entitled to,' he said. 'At the end of the day, the bare minimum, hopefully, at least you're getting that, and people are following their contract.' Read the original article on People
New York Times
2 days ago
- General
- New York Times
My Mother, the Artist, Discovered at 90
In the past month, I have been selling and giving away paintings. They are not the work of a famous artist or even my own output. No, they are the 400-painting oeuvre of my 90-year-old mother. A literature scholar by profession, she retired long ago from teaching and had painted nearly every day for 30 years due to a fiendish work ethic. But four months ago, she was diagnosed with cancer. I have been helping her with her chemotherapy appointments, among other only-child caretaker duties. For me, there has been a parallel quest, though: to sell or give away some of her oil paintings, many of which are still stored in her apartment. Finding homes for the paintings while she is still with me has taken on a strange urgency — I want her to know where they will dwell. I ask the new owner of each painting to send me a photograph to show her where it hangs. Yet there is more to it than that. As a result of cataloging and handling her work, I understand better what it is that she was doing, painting away, often alone, with only a few people — her fellow amateur artist retiree friends and the like — ever seeing most of what she made. Paintings can be seen as commemorating time or capturing individual subjectivity. While decades of art criticism have put these truisms in question, for my mother painting did give shape to her way of seeing. Why hadn't I paid more attention to her paintings before? Looking anew, I found out things about her that I had never bothered to think about — children, of course, don't tend to dwell on their parents' ambitions or reveries. My guess is that painting made her feel free, outside of time, age, self-criticism, self-doubt and even social class. My mother painted when she was young, and her abstract oils hung in our living room. I didn't think about them very much when I was a kid, although their very '60s color schemes might explain why my favorite color is orange. Then she took a long break, a career to attend to, a child to raise, teaching, with its small pleasures mixed with blue-book-grading drudgery. But after her early retirement from the City University of New York system — the buyouts of the 1990s — she suddenly had time for art classes. She describes it as 'a whole second life.' Some days, she'd paint all day long, sometimes just in the mornings. She painted in the Berkshires with painting friends and in a studio in an old-time artists' building in Union Square, a relic of an art scene in Manhattan that barely exists. All of this — being able to retire early, obtaining a reasonably priced studio to paint in (with excellent light, praise be), even an accessibly priced summer home — was, admittedly, part of an entire system of affordability that has basically vanished from many of our major cities. My mother was generationally lucky in this way. Over the years, my mom was in group exhibitions but never sought out a gallery show. To this day, she has a mixture of self-effacement and pride about her work. Her paintings may not be 'worth' a gallery show, in her mind, but they certainly shouldn't be cast out on the streets. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Inside Drew Barrymore's 'plain Jane' apartment that shocks fans as she breaks down in tears over the mess
D rew Barrymore has shown off her New York City apartment in a new video shared to Instagram on Monday. The 50-year-old talk show host took fans from room to room inside the sprawling pad as she revealed all the odd, old things she was planning on throwing out. It was all part of a 'home project,' the ET actress said on the clip. 'The many emotions of starting a home project. Why do I do this to myself??' she wrote in her caption. The living quarters are a far cry from what one would expect a successful movie star and cosmetics mogul who is worth $125M to live in. Instead of high ceilings and modern fixtures, the dwelling appeared frozen in the 1980s with more homey comforts. And some of the rooms were just plain cluttered with too much clothing, toys and furniture. Fans were shocked at the 'glow down' of her pad as they shared comments such as, 'That is a plain Jane apartment if I ever saw one' and, 'WOW. All I see is clutter. That set my OCD off big time.' One fan had an eagle eye: 'OMG I spy a vintage ET lunchbox on the top shelf.' Drew Barrymore has shown off her New York City apartment in a new video shared to Instagram on Monday The 50-year-old talk show host took fans from room to room inside the sprawling pad as she revealed all the odd, old things she was planning on throwing out Drew wore a colorful tie-dye T-shirt with pale pink Free City sweatpants as she had her hair up in a ponytail. Her mood was at times jolly and at other times mournful as she made humorous comments. The video began with her breaking down in tears as she stood in front of a home office. She seemed overwhelmed by the home task at hand as she talked to an assistant. Next Barrymore appeared happier as she walked out of a bathroom with white-and-black tiles. Son after she was grunting into the air as she seemed frustrated with what was in front of her. She was in a room that had a lot going on, like a plastic table, a gold lamp, a painting of a pink flamingo and a framed photograph. The clip took a funny turn when she closed herself inside her tiny home office which had wallpaper with pink flamingos in a gray background. Next came her taking odd things off a shelf like a red bucket with arts and crafts projects inside and a large stuffed turkey, though she did say 'the turkeys are staying.' It was all part of a 'home project,' the ET actress said on the clip. 'The many emotions of starting a home project. Why do I do this to myself??' she wrote in her caption The Poison Ivy actress danced a little as she walked out of the closet holding red heart shaped clips. Then she was back in her bathroom as she folded her arms while crying into a mirror. The room was a mess with Home Depot buckets near her and two ladders. The ex of Luke Wilson took a break from her chores to dance a little but before closing her eyes and sighing deeply. More clips saw her in her living room and walk-in closet. At the end of the video, she has a brown backpack on as she waves her finger now while frowning. She was praised by fans for her authenticity after she shared a rare glimpse inside her home. Fans felt the home was very 'normal' considering her fame and wealth. In arch 2024, the star went viral on TikTok after she shared a clip of herself cooking and tidying up her home as viewers claimed they didn't know it was 'possible' that an A-lister like Drew could live in a 'normal house.' Drew is frequently praised for her down-to-earth attitude and in a recent post on the social media app, she offered up yet another example of how she shies away from the stereotypical celebrity lifestyle. The actress was applauded for her 'modest' home, with many viewers voicing their surprise that the multi-millionaire had such a 'small' cooking space - while others admitted that they had expected to see Drew living in a much more over-the-top mansion. She captioned the viral video, which has so far amassed over 507,000 views, 'I love staying in.' As she cooked, tried clothes on, and showed herself eating the background audio said: 'I like staying in. I know everyone thinks it's boring but it's really not. 'It's the least boring thing. I'm a really happy little hermit. I love being at home . I never want to go anywhere.' The video featured glimpses of her home, which she previously told the LA Times was in between New York City and the Hamptons, having relocated from Los Angeles to the East Coast so that her children could be closer to their father, her ex Will Kopelman. People flooded the comments section and praised her for her humble abode. One person said: 'You give off the vibes of you bought your first apartment and you are still there, so wholesome and cute.' Someone else added: 'Is it possible that you live in a normal house?!' Another person commented: 'Wait, you don't have a chef?' 'I just love how simple but sophisticated you live,' wrote another user. Son after she was grunting into the air as she seemed frustrated with what was in front of her The single mother of daughters, Olive, 11, and Frankie, nine, admitted to People that, 'this has been the best decade of my life, without question.' 'It wasn't just the most awesome, it was the one where I feel like I've slayed more dragons than I ever have in my whole life.' On the topic of positivity and happiness, she added, 'As a kid and even in my 20s and 30s, happiness seemed like this very giddy, excited optimism. It is a choice. You have to work for that. It is hard to get to some days. And so when you've harnessed it, that feels like such a better victory.' In 2013, Drew sold her 1937 country estate, located in beautiful Montecito, California, for $6.35million, which was well below the asking price of $7.5million. The Charlie's Angels star bought the two-acre home in 2010 for $5.7 million dollars, so she was able to walk away with a sizable profit. The traditional home is six thousand square feet, has six bedrooms, seven and a half baths and an additional one bedroom guesthouse. After leaving the mansion in 2013, Drew reportedly moved on to Manhattan duplex with her then-husband Will Kopelman while still having a California space. When they split in 2016, Will moved to New York and Drew followed so that they could 'carry on as a family', despite being separated - adding that she didn't want it to affect her kids. Following her move, she has since kept the details of her properties private.
