Cities are regions that are heavily populated and where a lot of urban infrastructure such as public squares and roads as well as private buildings such as residential buildings co-exist in high density. During the initial process of urban state devel...
Cities are regions that are heavily populated and where a lot of urban infrastructure such as public squares and roads as well as private buildings such as residential buildings co-exist in high density. During the initial process of urban state development, markets, squares or roads which are public facilities within cities were important. It was part of an important government obligation to secure enough space for such infrastructure while managing them in its optimal state. Once the concept of a country was established, various theories emerged that emphasized that the securing and management of such public infrastructure is an important role and function of the country.
In particular, during the development of modern cities where population density increases dramatically and the function of the city itself is emphasized, conflicts between private and public interest often occurred. As a way of establishing appropriate plans for using land and securing and managing public facilities in an efficient manner, policies in the name of ‘Urban Planning’ emerged. Moreover, ‘Urban Redevelopment’ policies were also adopted to re-organize the functions of existing cities.
If urban planning has as its purpose a reasonable use of land and its management, then urban redevelopment sets as its purpose a new arrangement of existing land or buildings owned by individuals as well as urban infrastructure facilities in terms of their location and area. What emerges as a core issue in urban redevelopment is the harmony between private and public interest. How to regulate and manage this harmony is at the core of public law on land usage. That is, public law covers the agent and target of refinement infrastructure facilities that go with development, to whom such facilities belong to and to whom management obligations lie with.
This paper applies past court rulings on the installment agent of infrastructure facilities, management agents, the replacement of refinement infrastructure facilities and overlapping facilities to review the judgments made by the court. Based on the rulings of the Supreme Court that sees the regulatory character of the ownership of the infrastructure facilities, this paper reviews the definition and extent of existing infrastructure facilities that are the subject of free transfers, errors that may occur in administrative practice, related damage claims and issues, and the need for revising the related legislation.
Moreover, the paper reviews the rights to property, equality and compensation for the violation of property rights which are at the core of the issue concerning free transfers and ownership of refinement infrastructure facilities. The Constitutional Court recognized that this article in the law (Article 65, Clause 2 of the Act on Urban and Residential Environment Improvement) is eligible for review by the Constitutional Court but dismissed that it violates the basic rights of property, equality or compensation for violation of property rights. The reasons given by the Court were that the ‘free transfer of refinement infrastructure facilities that had been public cannot be used to compare the organization implementing the project and general citizens’ and that such measures’ were a way to provide public benefits to ease the burden of the project implementing organization of having to newly install infrastructures’.
Therefore, in relation to the Article 65, Clause 2 of the Act on Urban Improvement, if it is taken into account that the free transfer of infrastructure facilities eases the burden of being a dual benefit from the viewpoint of administrative practice and the public nature of the improvement project itself as well as the development profits to be generated from the installed facility, then it seems reasonable to newly include an article that states, ‘the project implementing organization, may not have to transfer for free the infrastructure in cases where it, in accordance with the national law or any related law, provided or donated land or public facilities to the local government in exchange for reducing the limits on building coverage ratio, floor area ratio or height.
Lastly, in terms of preventing any issues with the administration of authority and the protection of practical rights of citizens, or in other words, in terms of avoiding the controversy of indirect adoption of the administrative authority and protection of individual property rights, the issues identified in this study will have to be discussed further in detail to secure more urban infrastructure facilities that are much needed in an urban environment.