8 - A Shifting Paradigm of Urban Regeneration inSeoul?: A Case Study of Citizen Participation inHaebangchon Urban Regeneration Project

Summary

Abstract

The Urban Regeneration Project (URP) in SouthKorea was officially introduced in 2013 with aformal statement of an urban policy paradigmshift. According to the central government, theURP differs fundamentally from the comprehensiveurban redevelopment method or governmentledplanning in that it is oriented towards aninclusive and participatory approach indecision-making. Several novel organizations suchas the Residents’ Committee were introduced as apart of this approach. Seoul in particular, haspromoted the URP most proactively at the citylevel. In this chapter, the authors investigatewhether the newly introduced inclusive andparticipatory approach was implemented as it wasdesigned. Subsequently, the authors evaluatewhether the URP could be assessed as a ‘paradigmshift’.

Keywords: Citizen participation,participatory governance, intermediaryorganization, neighbourhood, urbanregeneration

Introduction

The Urban RegenerationProject (도시재생사업, URP) in South Korea(hereafter Korea) officially begun in 2013 with theenactment of the Special Act on Urban Regenerationin 2013. The central government proclaimed that theURP demonstrates a shifting paradigm of urban policy(MOLIT, 2013; URIS, 2015). The previous ‘paradigm ofurban policy’ mainly referred to the market-ledcomprehensive redevelopment approach in improvingderelict areas, as well as the government-ledtop-down planning process prevalent in the overallpolicy process (MOLIT, 2013; Park and Kim, 2014). Inthe marketled comprehensive redevelopment projectwhich had been the mainstream method forneighbourhood improvement since the 1980s,decision-making has been highly dominated byproperty owners but excluded the tenants (Shin andKim, 2015). Despite its contribution to the dramaticimprovement of the physical environment, strongcriticisms have been presented to the exclusivenature of the approach for tenants in both processand outcome, which in the end resulted inlarge-scale displacements and destructions ofexisting communities (Ha, 2004; Byeon, 2012).Against this background, calls for a more inclusiveand incremental approach of urban regeneration haveincreased (Jeong, 1999; Ha, 2001; Byeon, 2012; Park,2015). Moreover, this change needs to be understoodwithin the context of the political change at themacro-level. The demise of an authoritarian and therise of a democratic state have caused a fundamentalchange in the relation between the state and civilsociety in the overall policy process, and theemergence of the URP was not free from this changeat the macro-level.