For the last half century, we have made compact urban developments. We have unfolded new city and new built-up area oriented developments in order to increase the diffusion ratio of house and satisfy the growing demands for lands. In the meantime, i...
For the last half century, we have made compact urban developments. We have unfolded new city and new built-up area oriented developments in order to increase the diffusion ratio of house and satisfy the growing demands for lands. In the meantime, in old built-up areas, a sedentary population has decreased, and it has been difficult to avoid the weakening of various functions including commerce, culture, education, welfare.
The doughnut pattern and the resulting decline of central business have caused environmental, economic, and social problems, including a waste of energies and resources, traffic congestions, decrepit infrastructures of old built-up areas, deterioration of commercial functions. Since the preexisting urban maintenance projects have sought to invigorate stagnant regions based on physical environment maintenances to overcome the problems, there were restrictions on recovery of the desolated old built-up areas. In some circumstances, there were places where phenomena of vicious circles have appeared because the improvement effects have not been had on the physical environment and thus certain regions have fallen into a decline.
Urban regeneration can be considered a concept to revive cities by injecting appropriate programs together with physical maintenance projects. In other words, urban regeneration means all activities for curing physical, social and economic problems that the preexisting cities have, and may be accepted to have a broad concept including urban redevelopments, urban revitalization. If urban regeneration is broadly interpreted in terms of concept, the scope has very various projects including creating urban attractiveness and strengthening of urban functions. In other words, the preexisting urban maintenance projects based on the physical environment maintenances may be considered to have focused on the final results of environment improvements, while the urban regeneration projects may be seen to attach importance to the procedural fruits to preserve and enhance sustainable urban communities. Therefore, urban regeneration means physical, environmental, economic, life and cultural revitalization or revival by introducing or creating new functions to the preexisting cities that have been relatively declining as a result of changes in industrial structures, urban expansion oriented to new cities and new built-up cities.
As a result, the urban regeneration related laws being currently implemented merely take partial or fragmentary measures in terms of physical environment maintenances including reconstruction and redevelopment. In such circumstances, it becomes of great importance to recover the depressed functions and recreate them into competitive settlement environments by making physical, industrial, economic, social and cultural improvements in the decrepit regions. Therefore, in the future, it is urgently required to develop urban regeneration related laws and support systems taking into consideration economic revival of cities and recovery of urban vitalities. For these purposes, this study seeks to analyze problems of the preexisting urban regeneration related laws of Korea, and based on the analysis, find out measures to improve urban regeneration related laws.
The first problem of the current urban regeneration is the absence of public roles and the privatization of development profits. Secondly, being unable to guarantee profitability in light of the attributes of urban regeneration projects of Korea, regional small and medium cities have problems that make it impossible to proceed with urban regeneration projects. Thirdly, foreign countries implement various forms of maintenance projects according to the features of regions for maintenance, whereas the 「Urban and Residential Environment Maintenance Act」 are limited to three forms of the local improvement method, the apartment house method, and the environmental method, and rather the redevelopment projects made by the private sector are oriented to the apartment house construction project by total removal. Fourthly, there is a problem of the lack of fundraising measures. As a result of the absence of various advanced financial methods, there are many restrictions on and difficulties in fundraising methods that are seriously required to proceed with the redevelopment related projects. Fifthly, the absence of public functions to arbitrate and mediate disputes associated with urban regeneration related projects is causing endless distrust and conflict among the participants including the promotion committee, developers, land owners, tenants, and merchants for leases, and among interested parties. Sixthly, it is a big problem that inventories are disappearing as a result of the encroachment of low cost housing. Seventhly, there is the absence of improvement systems to realize efficient urban regeneration projects.
This study has drawn the legal improvements for urban regeneration invigoration, based on the implications acquired in analyzing problems of urban regeneration in Korea and the legal system for urban regeneration legal in developed counties as follows:
First, considering improvements (proposals) for relevant systems including the National Land Planning Act, the following content should be presumed and declared in the Act Relating to the Planning and Use of National Lands. With respect to the meanings and roles of urban regeneration projects, the planing paradigm is rapidly changing to changes in circumstances, such as the slowdown of population growth, the rapid progress of the aging, urban policies oriented not to growth but to management, an increase in interest for green growth. Therefore, as did the urbanization of many developed countries, the future Korea is quickly turning to an urban policy oriented to maintenance of the built-up areas. Accordingly, the future urban developments and management should turn to the use, development, maintenance, and management oriented not to the out-of-town green fields but to the brown fields of built-up areas. In that regard, the future urban policy ways and the changes in circumstances, and the meanings and necessities of urban regeneration should be declared in the Act Relating to the Planning and Use of National Lands.
Secondly, the Basic Urban Regeneration Act should be enacted.
In the first place in terms of legislation, considering the necessity of legislation, the new Basic Urban Regeneration Act (tentatively named) should be enacted to overcome the limits of the prior systems. The main content should consist of forming the purpose and basic spirit of urban regeneration, establishing an urban self-governing organization, setting up basic plans or measures for urban regeneration, introducing urban regeneration connected project systems, designating urban regeneration regions, absorbing wide planning functions of urban re-maintenance promotion projects, supporting urban regeneration, strengthening public roles, laying the foundation for systems for low-carbon green regeneration, diversifying regeneration strategies, and clarifying legal systems by putting in place relationships among individual project laws. Thirdly, it is necessary to reform urban regeneration related laws, including the Urban and Residential Environment Maintenance Planning Act and the Special Act for Urban Re-maintenance Promotion.
The legislation of the Basic Urban Regeneration Act should come with the maintenance of relevant laws. The legal provisions relating to residential environments of the urban regeneration related laws including the preexisting the Special Act for Urban Re-maintenance Promotion, the Uran and Residential Environment Maintenance Act should be reorganized into the residential environment maintenance laws, while the legal provisions relating to non-residential buildings or urban environment maintenances should be reorganized into the urban environment maintenance laws.
Key word: Urban Regeneration, Reconstruction, Redevelopment, the Residential Environment Maintenance Act, Urban Revitalization, the Public Roles, the Development Profits, the Basic Urban Regeneration Act, the Residential Environment Maintenance Act, the Special Act for Urban Re-maintenance Promotion.