A road in the center of a new suburb near Santa Cruz, Bolivia, has been named “Avenida Corea” (Korea Avenue) to recognize Korea‘s help in building the city, according to the Transport Ministry Thursday.

The new city, modeled after Korea’s suburban apartment communities, will be about 56 square kilometers, or three times the size of Seoul’s major suburb Bundang. 

According to the Transport Ministry, Korea provided consulting on the project to create an eco-friendly suburb with applications of smart technology. 

The $3.2 billion project is designed to include 100,000 households for up to 350,000 residents. The project is being built by Bolivian company Grupo Empresarial Lafuente.

Since 2014, The Korea Land and Housing Corporation has consulted on the Bolivian project. GEL also contracted a consortium of Korean companies, Sunjin-Pyunghwa Engineering Consortium, for the working design of the new city.

So far, the consortium has completed about $11.5 million worth of design work for the project.

At the road naming ceremony held in Santa Cruz Wednesday (local time), Vice Minister for Land and Infrastructure Kim Kyung-hwan said that he hoped to see more Korean companies‘ participation in Santa Cruz’s new city, which he called “the first case of exporting Korean-style suburbs to Central and South America.” 

By Won Ho-jung (hjwon@heraldcorp.com)