South Korea's Urban Regeneration New Deal — Neighbourhood-Scale Renewal Since 2017

Launched by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) in December 2017, South Korea's Urban Regeneration New Deal funds neighbourhood-scale renewal projects — ranging from small residential "Our Neighbourhood Restoration" schemes to larger "Economic-Base Type" industrial and port-area projects — selected annually across five categories, as a deliberate alternative to large-scale demolition-and-rebuild redevelopment. Resident participation is institutionalised through mandatory local Urban Regeneration Support Centers.
MOLIT selected 68 sites in December 2017, 99 in 2018 and 116 in 2019 (283 cumulative through 2019, per Korea's official policy portal), against a five-year (2018–2022) national funding target of roughly KRW 50 trillion (about US$44 billion) combining state finance, the Housing and Urban Fund, and public-enterprise investment. A 2023 peer-reviewed study in Heliyon examining regeneration sites in Busan found that average population continued to fall by 8.8% after project completion — with one site down 38.2% — even as local business counts rose by an average of 37.6%; only one of the studied sites gained population.
An independent review of MOLIT's own project database, reported by Seoul Economic Daily in 2026, found that of 116 completed projects only 19% were rated "excellent" by evaluators, 63% "average" and 19% "unsatisfactory" — attributed mainly to a lack of maintenance funding and staff once state support ended. A separate KRIHS case study of the flagship Daegu Jung-gu project found visitor numbers rose from about 300 in 2008 to 1.1 million in 2015, but the number of grocery stores fell from 25 to 10 and clothing stores from 5 to 3 while cafés grew from zero to seven — a documented gentrification effect alongside the area's commercial revival.

Read the full analysis: https://www.molit.go.kr/english/intro.do