Sixteen Seoul districts are pushing to change the threshold for transferring redevelopment permit authority from "fewer than 500 units" to "30,000 square meters or less," raising the prospect that reconstruction complexes previously excluded under the old standard would now fall under district control. Redevelopment associations, however, have mounted a collective protest, arguing that dispersing the authority would bring administrative confusion and haphazard development rather than speed up projects.
Dongjak District said on the 13th that division chiefs in charge of redevelopment at 16 Seoul district offices held the second meeting of the District Task Force on the Transfer of Redevelopment Zone Designation Authority at Dongjak District Office on the 7th, discussing the transfer of authority to designate and revise redevelopment zones and plans for forming integrated review committees. The meeting followed their first session on the 2nd, when they began working-level discussions on the transfer, and produced a specific direction for revising the relevant laws.
The biggest change concerns the threshold for the transfer. The districts decided to recommend to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport that a standard of "30,000 square meters or less" be applied instead of the "fewer than 500 units" originally discussed. The reasoning is that unit counts can shift during a project, making floor area a relatively objective measure. As a result, mid-sized reconstruction complexes that had been excluded under the unit-count standard could now qualify. Dangsan Hyundai 3rd, in Yeongdeungpo District, which received notice of its redevelopment zone designation early this month, has 509 existing units, exceeding the 500-unit threshold, but its zone covers 18,570.9 square meters, below 30,000.
The scope of what counts as a minor revision to a redevelopment plan would also be broadened. The threshold for changes to zone area, the scale of infrastructure, building-to-land ratio and floor area ratio would be eased from the current less than 10% to less than 20%, and changes to the use or scale of public facility buildings would be added to the list of minor revisions. A new provision would also make it mandatory for relevant agencies to recommend members for each district's integrated review committee. The districts also plan to draw up guidelines for small-scale redevelopment zones that take local development conditions into account.
Associations and preparatory committees actually carrying out redevelopment projects, however, are saying the opposite. The Seoul Redevelopment Federation, an incorporated association made up of association heads and preparatory committee chairs from about 65 redevelopment zones in Seoul, held a news conference in front of Seoul City Hall on the same day and called for a halt to the transfer of zone designation authority to the districts.
"The speed of a redevelopment project does not come from dividing up authority but from clearing the bottlenecks where projects are actually delayed," said Kim Joon-yong, chairman of the Seoul Redevelopment Federation. "Handing zone designation authority to the districts could bring administrative confusion and delays rather than move projects forward." Kim added that a 1,500-unit apartment complex can secure ample parks and community facilities while keeping construction and management costs down, but that if it is split into 400-unit pieces, construction and management burdens grow and the living environment can actually worsen. "Redevelopment has to be pursued by taking roads, schools and infrastructure into account as a whole, not zone by zone," Kim said.
The federation pointed to the stages after zone designation as the main source of delays. The time it takes to reach zone designation has been shortened by Seoul's fast-track planning program, it said, while delays persist in procedures handled by the districts, including approval of preparatory committees, establishment of associations, project implementation authorization and management disposal plan authorization.
An official involved in a redevelopment project in Changsin-dong, Jongno District, who attended the news conference, said the project filed an application for designation as project implementer in June but has waited more than 100 days without receiving the designation notice. "There is no particular reason for it," the official said.
As the debate over the transfer gathers pace, anxiety is also growing in zones at the early stages of their projects. An official at a redevelopment preparatory committee in Dongdaemun District said sites approaching zone designation are under the greatest psychological strain. "We received fast-track designation last month, and we are worried administrative processing will be delayed for one reason or another," the official said. Another redevelopment official said districts are now putting off even simple approvals ahead of the transfer.
The federation also took issue with the possibility that different standards would apply from district to district. Zone designation is the procedure that determines floor area ratios, land contributions and rental housing quotas, matters tied directly to association members' property rights. If the authority is dispersed across the 25 districts, review standards and processing speeds would vary by area, potentially stirring disputes over fairness.
The area-based standard proposed by the districts also falls short of resolving concerns about haphazard development, the federation said. "Switching from a 500-unit standard to an area standard does not solve the problem," Kim said. "If large redevelopment zones are artificially split up, it becomes harder to secure enough parks, roads and resident amenities, and project viability can deteriorate as well."
Securing the specialists and budget needed to run integrated review committees was cited as another challenge. Building at the district level a review system that has been operated by the city would require specialists across urban planning, architecture and transportation, and transferring authority without that preparation could end up slowing reviews, the federation said.
Seoul has also opposed transferring redevelopment authority to the districts, arguing that it would undermine the consistency of citywide urban planning and split administrative procedures in two. The districts plan to put the item on the agenda of the 204th regular meeting of the Seoul Council of District Mayors on the 14th before recommending the legal revisions to the land ministry. "The purpose of the transfer is not simply to bring the city's authority over to the districts, but to cut procedures that are needlessly repeated on the ground and build a system that lets redevelopment move faster," Dongjak District Mayor Ryu Sam-young said.