Recently, urban regeneration has become the most fashionable planning issue in Korea. Not only Korea, but numerous governments all over the world are struggling for regenerating their decayed urban area and the main goal in most urban regeneration str...
Recently, urban regeneration has become the most fashionable planning issue in Korea. Not only Korea, but numerous governments all over the world are struggling for regenerating their decayed urban area and the main goal in most urban regeneration strategies is to attract investment and population back to the inner areas which are experiencing decline due to economic restructuring and the flight of the middle class to the suburbs.
Regeneration in the UK is interesting, because it is a front runner in urban regeneration policies. The earliest urban regeneration policies to tackle urban decline have originated in the UK. As one of the first countries to industrialize, it also was one of the first to undergo decline and restructuring of its cities.
This paper seeks to understand policy agenda setting process of urban regeneration in the UK focused on 1960s~1980s. It is very important because it is impossible and meaningless to copy other countries' experiences without taking account of the differences in characteristics of urban problems as well as economic, political, and social environments. A special attention is given to identifying unique character of urban decline and urban problems in historical context. This will help to seek and establish Korean model of urban regeneration.
The first urban initiatives emerged in Britain in the late 1960s. Urban programme and the Community Development Projects were firmly in tune with the prevailing social pathology approach and operated through area-based measure. The Urban Programme served as a filler of gaps in existing provision and involved positive discrimination in favor of selected groups or areas and typically took the form of small-scale projects emphasizing experimentation, self-help, co-ordination of existing services and the promotion of rapid results. In 1972, the Inner Area Studies(IAS) was set up and these studies emphasized an understanding of the causes of urban deprivation. The Inner Area Studies fed into the 1977 White Paper: ‘The Policy for the Inner Cities’, which in turn resulted in the Inner Area Act of 1978. The White Paper represented the first serious attempt by a government in the post-war era to understand the nature and causes of Britain’s urban problems and significant changes in urban policy. After Mrs. Thatcher's accession to power in 1979, urban regeneration dominated of a strategy of property-led regeneration and Quangos played an important role.
The outward signs of urban problems in British cities, such as physical decay, social polarization, crime among others, can be easily detected, but the underlying causes of such symptoms are usually multiple in origin. The decline in traditional manufacturing sectors which was resulted of global economic restructuring, across Britain left large tracts of abandoned land, obsolescent factories, and technological environments left a large resentful population unable to find employment. The inner cities were increasingly marked by physical decay and dereliction. Meanwhile the forces of decentralization pulled many affluent people to move into the newer, better serviced suburbs which promised a better quality of life than in the inner cities. While the middle class moved out into the suburbs, their places were quickly filled with ethnic minorities who were more likely to be socially disadvantaged.
Politicians and civil servants at the summits of power have often placed the inner cities in the headlines and at the top of the agenda in the absence of any apparent crisis or pressure. Top government ministers and senior officials have played an active role in maintaining the issue on the agenda. The main political events or trends associated with the enactment of particular policy measures are also identified. These include riots, fears about immigration and race relations, and the intervention of key individuals.
In Britain, social problems, such as unemployment, crime, vandalism, racial segregation, were the initial causes for urban regeneration. Depending on the causes for urban decline, Britain has responded with its own approach reflecting its priorities in urban policy. But Korea did not experience any wrenching economic restructuring and social pathology when regeneration came to the fore in public discourse. To make Korean type of urban regeneration, we not be supposed to copying other countries' policy and we will try to find feature of urban decline cause and condition Korean cities.