INCHEON — Incheon has launched an experiment that breaks with the practice of leaving urban planning to administrators and experts, starting instead from the daily lives of residents to sketch the city's spatial blueprint.
The city government said it held the first meeting of the citizen planning group for the 2045 Incheon Urban Master Plan on the 2nd at a conference hall in city hall, formally beginning its work. The urban master plan is the highest-level statutory spatial plan, setting land use, transport networks and infrastructure placement in Incheon for the next 20 years.
The process completely reverses the previous top-down approach, in which the government completed a draft and then held public hearings. Incheon has adopted an eight-stage bottom-up process that gathers residents' views first, puts them through deliberation and public debate, and only then produces a draft. In an earlier pilot run of the platform, 4,007 people took part over two weeks, generating more than 110 times the input collected under the old public hearing format, which drew 36 submissions.
The 124 members of the citizen planning group, who will define the city's future vision, were selected through an open call. Last month the city screened applicants for gender and age balance across eight neighborhood zones and verified whether they could actually attend sessions. The group includes young adults, job seekers, office workers, self-employed business owners, homemakers, and workers in the arts and social welfare sectors.
The group will hold three rounds of intensive discussions through the 16th of this month. It is divided into five subcommittees covering urban planning and housing, transport and logistics, environment and leisure, industry and the economy, and culture and tourism. The results of its full deliberations on local issues will be passed to a 330-member district planning group, which will draw up detailed alternatives at the city, county and district level.
A channel for public participation will also remain open at all times. Residents can use mobile and online platforms to mark inconveniences or suggested improvements in their neighborhoods directly on a map. The submissions will be analyzed with artificial intelligence and visualized through a geographic information system for use as source material for the plan.
The role of experts has also been overhauled. An advisory panel of about 50 specialists across four subcommittees will no longer review residents' opinions as it did in the past. Instead, it will act as a support body, refining the vision and strategies set by residents into urban plans that are legally and technically feasible.
The city is also working to incorporate global urban planning models. Incheon is conducting research on "Beyond 15 Minute," a project under the European Driving Urban Transitions international call, together with domestic and overseas academic and industry partners including Seoul National University, Hyundai Motor, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the University of Stavanger in Norway. The aim is to move beyond the limits of the existing "15-minute city" concept and build neighborhood-level plans suited to Incheon, where older urban centers, new towns and rural and fishing communities coexist.
"The starting point of urban planning must always be the everyday spaces of residents," Incheon Mayor Park Chan-dae said. "We will actively support efforts to ensure that the experiences and proposals residents feel in daily life are fully reflected in the blueprint for Incheon's future in 2045."
