Housing renewal and neighborhood change as a gentrification process in Seoul: Fid-Bau Portal

Housing renewal and neighborhood change as a gentrification process in Seoul

Ha, Seong-Kyu

AbstractThis paper examines the actual contribution of a housing renewal project to the improvement of residents’ housing welfare and community development. Since a joint redevelopment project (JRP) was introduced in the early 1980s, there has been considerable physical improvement. However, it has led to various problems such as the lack of residents’ participation in the planning process, the inequity of housing allocations and a lack of housing affordability for low-income residents. In Korea, the government has followed a “trickle down” or “filtering” strategy. The market approach of residential redevelopment schemes can be characterized as a landlord-initiated gentrification process. Considerable amounts of the JRP profits have gone to speculators and middle-income households rather than to original residents. It seems that gentrification becomes a consummate expression of neo-liberal urbanism in Korea. The survey evidence demonstrates that only 20% of the original residents were resettled after the completion of the housing renewal projects. The low-income community has been broken up as a result of the project and the original residents are losing the low-income social network that they once enjoyed.