Seoul, home to 9.3 million people, is a hub of politics, industry, finance, education and culture, with abundant infrastructure, capital and talent concentrated in one place. But structural problems that erode quality of life — housing shortages, soaring home prices, traffic congestion and air pollution — are threatening the city's sustainable growth and competitiveness. Lee Chang-moo, a professor of urban planning at Hanyang University who was recently appointed Seoul's fifth chief city architect and chairman of the city's G3 Seoul Planning Committee, said in an interview with the Seoul Economic Daily on the 24th that "years of clinging to high-density development on the metropolitan fringe have worsened the burden of social costs from wasted commuting time and environmental problems." Lee argued that urban redevelopment should be steered toward densifying the city center rather than outward sprawl. "Now is the golden time to prepare for an era of urban shrinkage like Japan's," Lee stressed, adding that Seoul must secure housing space and improve productivity by remaking the space of a competitive metropolitan area.
Q: What is the top priority in managing Seoul's spatial layout?
A: Seoul is only one administrative district. In a larger frame, I want to consider Seoul's role and responsibility from the perspective of it being the central city of the "Seoul metropolitan area" that has expanded southward. The most pressing task is securing residential space, which makes up 80% of the city. It is important to remake the space of a competitive metropolitan area in connection with the housing supply policy now under discussion. Only when housing supply locations are properly established can we make long-term improvements to the productivity losses that stem from an inefficient spatial structure of the past, and have the capacity to survive when we face the "urban shrinkage" problem that Japan's major cities are experiencing. I think now is the golden time to respond to the coming era of urban shrinkage.
Q: What is the urban shrinkage problem?
A: It has been 15 years since Japan's population began declining due to a low birth rate. Not only in provincial areas, but also in the new towns built on the outskirts of Tokyo during the past era of population growth, vacant homes are increasing and the areas are decaying as the population falls, shrinking the scale of these cities. South Korea's metropolitan areas, where the birth rate is falling faster than Japan's, are highly likely to face a similar situation.
Q: How should we respond?
A: Japan, which has been troubled by shrinking urban scale, is now making efforts to build up the vitality of its city centers. As it speeds up rebuilding and redevelopment in the city center, the 23 wards at the heart of Tokyo are seeing population increases and regaining vitality. South Korea, by contrast, has concentrated urban improvement on expanding the outskirts, even though demand for central Seoul is high. Clinging to sprawling urban expansion and high-density development on the periphery risks a blow when the coming population decline and era of urban shrinkage arrive. Of course, there would be nothing to worry about if marriages, births and inflows of foreign population increased, but that is not easy. There is still some time to spare, so we need to fill in the city-center development left undone and raise residential density in the core.
Q: How is Seoul's competitiveness as a global city assessed?
A: In the Global Power City Index (GPCI), which Japan's Mori Memorial Foundation evaluates based on the economy, livability, environment and transportation accessibility, Seoul ranked sixth last year. The city's goal is to become one of the world's top three cities (G3).
Q: What do you think is the key factor in raising urban competitiveness?
A: A city is an entity that enjoys the economy of spatial agglomeration. Maximizing the economy of agglomeration by optimizing the costs of spatial movement by economic and social actors is the basic condition for raising urban productivity and economic competitiveness. A wasteful commute that takes three hours just to travel to and from work is a serious social cost. We must make it possible for more people to live in employment centers. It is also important to have the cultural and social infrastructure to compete with global cities and the ability to create innovation. The ability to create jobs through innovation is an important foundation for a leap to G3. On top of that, improvements to quality of life such as health and culture must be added.
Q: It seems this cannot easily be done artificially.
A: In that sense, Seongsu-dong is an interesting place. Rather than a development plan by the government or a local government, it is a case in which social venture firms that use private social rental space were born, and workers at information technology (IT) firms in places like Bundang and Pangyo flocked there, so that from the mid-2010s employment concentrated and developed organically. It is especially significant in that it drew high-caliber talent from the Gangnam area, which had been moving south into Gyeonggi Province, back into Gangbuk (the area north of the Han River). To move beyond a Gangnam-led model and realize a "Gangbuk heyday" in reality, we will need efforts that do not stop at slogans but instead find Gangbuk's competitiveness, expand its role and present alternatives, as in this case. In addition, to take on the big picture of G3, thinking about balanced development within Seoul must go beyond a simple Gangnam-Gangbuk relationship and be grounded in the entire metropolitan area. Only then can the city grow and strengthen its competitiveness.
Q: What are Seoul's strengths and weaknesses compared with other global cities?
A: Seoul is a physically unusual city. Unlike other major cities that sit on flat land and expand across an area, its topography is complex. Except for the old city center and Gangnam, it has a "corridor" structure that squeezes in between mountains. That can be both a strength and a weakness. In terms of economic efficiency and productivity, it is a disadvantage. A city needs to spread out across an area to form a thick hinterland anchored by employment centers and to let subcenters grow freely, but when a city expands along corridors, subcenters find it hard to grow and the cost of spatial movement inevitably rises. Still, this weakness can instead be turned into a strength. That is because the large rivers and mountains — nature that has come inside the city — can be used as elements to improve quality of life. By developing the themes of nature, leisure and health, we can make them Seoul's own strength.
Q: Shouldn't Seoul's spatial design change from the standpoint of climate risk response, not just population?
A: I think it is not good for climate response for a city to expand its area while staying at low density. If long-distance car commuting increases, carbon dioxide emissions and air pollution become unavoidable. It is preferable instead to make the city center taller and denser while properly arranging sunlight, wind corridors and the like. By using the topographical structure and drawing green space into the city, we can respond actively to climate change.
Q: What should be considered the appropriate development density for Seoul's city center?
A: There are voices that view high-density development against an absolute standard and worry about infrastructure burdens and the like. But if one part of a city is not developed at high density, another part inevitably will be. Aren't we repeating the side effect in which, in an effort to restrain city-center development, apartments go up in the middle of green space and farmland on the outskirts? Accommodating development demand where densification is needed is actually the way to reduce side effects. Developing the city center increases the use of public transit, so the burden of congestion actually falls. I do not think there is an appropriate density for city-center densification. From a relative standpoint, density can rise high enough.
Q: Don't Seoul's redevelopment projects worsen the strain on jeonse and monthly rentals?
A: The current situation is the result of the Roh Moo-hyun and Moon Jae-in administrations being held back time and again out of fear of that fallout. There cannot be no impact. But there can be various options for how to manage the ripple effects. Rather than endlessly delaying the rebuilding of aging Gangnam apartments, we could adjust the approach by actively securing supply through non-redevelopment projects to absorb relocation demand and by moving up the relocation timing instead. This is not a problem that will be solved by simply putting it off. If we make up our minds to do it, various flexible alternatives can emerge.
Q: The demand for rebuilding itself also seems to have fallen compared with the past.
A: It is true that demand exists, but as cost burdens have grown, concerns have increased over profitability. But the excessive rise in cost burdens is also largely due to the growing conditions imposed by the government, such as rental housing supply, contributions in kind and rebuilding levies. It was fine in an era when just building apartments left large profits, but in a period of slowing growth, the intensity of development profits also weakens. The mechanisms for clawing back development gains, created during the growth era, need to be scaled back.
Q: Is there an area in Seoul's city-center improvement that urgently needs to be addressed?
A: Residential redevelopment and rebuilding are important, but there are also many decaying districts within the old city center. The Sewoon Arcade and its surrounding area, designated as an urban renewal acceleration district in 2006, has a good location but is losing steam amid historical issues and social conflicts. Sewoon District 4, which involves the Jongmyo Shrine controversy, is the same. Beyond these, some areas are frightening enough to walk around at night. Preserving the city in its old form is important, but creating and improving living space is also an important goal. We must revive the decayed old city center through compromise at an appropriate level.
Q: How do you assess the government's policy direction of releasing greenbelt land to use for housing supply?
A: I basically think it should be used. It is my personal opinion that the greenbelt was one of the disastrous choices in Korea's urban planning. It was entirely possible to develop the Seoul metropolitan area while protecting mountains and green space, but once the greenbelt designation tied up usable land, residential land development leapfrogged from the city center to outlying new towns. That is the biggest cause of encouraging wasteful commuting. And it did not even control development. Growth cannot be stopped by physical regulatory means.
Q: The government is raising the argument that real estate is ruining the country. Should Seoul's rising home prices be viewed as a national crisis?
A: No. It could be a crisis if, as in past Japan, a bubble formed in real estate prices across major cities nationwide, but ours is a localized upswing confined to parts of the metropolitan area. The government going all in on curbing prices for the "one solid home" instead creates a balloon effect that deepens the problem. That side effect is being borne in full by young and middle-aged renter households, who ought to enjoy access to jobs. In the end, it is low- and middle-income households who suffer from abnormal policy choices set off by excessive anxiety.
◇ He is…
Lee graduated from Seoul National University's Department of Urban Engineering, earned a master's degree in urban engineering at the same graduate school, and received a doctorate in city and regional planning from the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. After serving as a senior researcher in the real estate department at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, an associate research fellow at the Seoul Development Institute, and a research associate professor in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Seoul National University, he has been a professor of urban planning at Hanyang University since 2003. He is an expert in urban planning and housing policy who has served as a member of the presidential Regional Development Committee, a member of the Central Urban Planning Committee of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, a member of Seoul's Urban Planning Committee, president of the Korea Housing Association, president of the Korea Real Estate Analysts Association, and president of the Asian Real Estate Society. He was recently appointed co-chairman of Seoul's G3 Seoul Planning Committee and the fifth chief city architect, and is leading the design of Seoul's future space.
