The role of the green belt in Seoul's system of territorial regulation

Abstract

South Korea has gone through a rapid urbanization after the Korean War and the country’s split into two part. The large influx of refugees from its northern part and the economic development later on resulted in an increased population concentration affecting Seoul the most. As a result, more than half of the country’s population lives in the Seoul Metropolitan Area today. Since the late sixties the Korean government has developed multiple land-use planning programs to battle with the growing problematics of the increasing population density, housing shortages, infrastructural difficulties and especially the spreading shantytowns all around the city. Nevertheless, the most important reason to create a ten-kilometre-wide green belt, around South Korea’s capital city, laying about fifteen kilometres from its centre, was to strengthen national security. Seoul lay close to its northern border and has a high risk of security. In the first half of this study the land-use planning means in South Korea during the period of the 1960s and the following three decades, the demographic background and their effectiveness is described from a critical perspective. Zoning, economic and institutional restrictions had more countereffects than planned benefits. As a general solution, the plan for a green belt around Seoul was implemented in 1971, following the example of London. Today this is the second largest green belt in the world and have a handful of benefits. It controls the urban sprawl in a rapidly growing city, gives the opportunity to create a recreational environment for the inhabitants of the capital city and results better air quality, improves biodiversity and reduces the heat island effect in Seoul.

The planning and evaluation of the green belt, as part of the land-use planning policy in South Korea, is described in the second half of the study. However, not only benefits derived from the implementation of the green belt, but many negative social and economic consequences came with it. As an original goal, economic and demographic decentralization upset balance in favour of the urban periphery and has achieved only partial results: with the development of the external areas, increasing infrastructure (roads, railways), social (increasing the number and time of commuting) and environmental (air pollution) costs were created. Indirectly, the green belt also reduced productivity, and the preservation of less valuable spaces was at the expense of external, more valuable spaces. The economic, social, and ecological impacts have also been analyzed over the past decades, and after processing, taking into account the secondary impact of the green belt, including the recently introduced preservation programs in Seoul, we assess the overall socio- economic impact of the green belt.