Research Report
A Study on the Improvement of Legislation for Higher Efficiency in “Urban Renewal New Deal Projects” through the Establishment of the Integrated Urban Management System
Ⅰ. Backgrounds and Purposes
▶ Establishment and achievements of the Special Act on Urban Regeneration and Support in 2013
○ The Special Act on Urban Regeneration and Support was enacted in 2013 in order to improve problems related to land use caused by urban development projects focusing on large-scale area development, which has been continuously carried out since the 1970's, through sustainable urban development methods participated in and led by citizens.
○ Article 2 (1) 1 of the said act defines urban regeneration as “economic, social, physical and environmental revitalization of cities that are deteriorating due to the population decline, changes in industrial structure, the indiscriminate expansion of cities, and the aging residential environment by reinforcing regional capacity, introducing and creating new functions and using local resources,” divides the types of projects into economic-based or neighborhood-regenerating types and conducts them.
○ Urban regeneration business has become a new improvement measure for urban deterioration that affected the 65% of all cities nationwide in the past, as well as made great contributions to Korea’s urban policies, for example, by ranking 7th in the construction technology level in terms of construction and traffic research and development sector; reducing investments in infrastructure construction by 10%; cutting distribution, traffic congestion and car accident expenses by 10%; decreasing national disaster expenses by 10%; and achieving a 10% overseas market share.
▶ The emergence of the Urban Renewal New Deal Project and the necessity of legal actions
○ In May 2017, the Moon Jae-in administration declared to conduct the “Urban Renewal New Deal Project” as a policy project to overcome the problems in the new town-oriented development and to revitalize the old downtown and residential areas to include macro space units of the municipal urban areas, low-rise old residential areas, old industrial complexes, subway station spheres, local small cities and rural areas;
○ and as a project from a micro-perspective to regenerate and revitalize innovation, cultural, business and commercial spaces as well as to improve residential space.
○ Since this is a nationwide policy project, which is carried out based on the legal institutional framework of existing urban regeneration projects, such nature of the project may result in repetition of problems that have appeared in previous projects hinder related systems from being put in place.
○ Based on full understanding of problems such as the rapid deterioration of cities’ downtowns caused by the decrease in population, lack of connections in the implementation of government policies on the use of urban spaces such as innovative and smart cities, insufficient use of public and private cooperation, which is the key to the completion of the urban regeneration projects, and in particular, the insufficient systematic relations establishment and mutual contacts among related laws from the perspective of legislation,
○ It is strongly required to legalize regulations on 1) the establishment of the special zones for urban renewal, 2) the introduction of the urban renewal project approval system, 3) the improvement of the urban regeneration planning system, and 4) enhancement of the standard for designating revitalization areas, in order to improve the efficiency of the Urban Renewal New Deal project.
Ⅱ. Major Content
▶ Urban regeneration, the development of the Urban Renewal New Deal Project and the review of legal problems
○ The foundation for this research is laid by preferentially reviewing the development and the current state of urban renewal projects as the system to develop and use existing urban spaces and assessing and forecasting problems caused in the process of operating the system.
○ This study explores differences in policies between the Urban Renewal New Deal Project, which has recently emerged with the government’s announcement in May 2017, and the existing urban regeneration projects, as well as suggesting opinions on the legal prospect and improvements to enhance the effectiveness of the future Urban Renewal New Deal Project based on analysis of legal problems that have arisen in the process of conducting existing urban regeneration projects.
▶ Survey and analysis of major countries’ urban renewal projects
○ This study draws implications by selecting the United States, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom as major countries for survey and collecting and examining the time-periodic characteristics and major policies related to urban space restoration, development and use of those countries, primarily in the 1950s, after the World War II.
▶ Recognizing the necessity of the creation of a comprehensive urban management system and establishing a planning system between related laws
○ The “integrated urban management system” in this study refers to the development of urban renewal projects, which in other words can be understood as a comprehensive urban management system to answer the very purpose of urban projects and conduct the projects more efficiently in the major stages of projects including planning, conducting and financing.
○ The necessity of establishing such a urban management system is based on the recognition of problems at each stage of existing urban regeneration projects. Therefore, this study preferentially draws improvement measures based on strong requests for establishing hierarchy among related laws and clarifying their mutual relations, though it may be difficult to create a comprehensive urban management system due to the nature of operational problems appearing at each stage of those projects.
▶ Ways of revising legislation to improve the efficiency of the Urban Regeneration New Deal Project
○ This study suggests ways of revising legislation to enhance the efficiency of the Urban Regeneration New Deal Project: in large, the clarification of the legal nature of the special law on support for the urban regeneration; and detailed regulations including 1) the establishment of the special zones for urban renewal, 2) the introduction of the urban renewal project approval system, 3) the improvement of the urban regeneration planning system, and 4) enhancement of the standard for designating revitalization areas.
Ⅲ. Expected Effects
○ The study result is expected to act as a normative mechanism for the construction of a compact city, which is the ultimate goal of the paradigm shift in Korea’s urban development projects, as well as to be used as a preemptive frame of reference for putting the Urban Renewal New Deal Project in place and enhancing its efficiency during the period (2019-2020) set by the Moon administration as the period for the stabilization of state affairs performance.