Household Shifts
Changing Korean Urban Landscape and Its Institutional Forces
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Hyunjeong Lee, Do Yeon Hwang
Since modern South Korea was framed by and evolved from a developmental model, the housing system has been strongly embedded in pro-growth, market-driven orientation, and speedy industrialization and intense urbanization has dramatically reformed urban landscape. Further, two economic crises – the Asian Financial Crisis and the Global Financial Crisis – have strengthened economic uncertainties and demographic shifts, thus deepening household variations and housing varieties. In fact, casualization in employment, reduction in real wages, and delays in family formation have resulted in dwindling housing opportunities and even widened socio-economic disparities (e.g., shrinking middle-class and housing price fluctuations and differences by regions). In recent years, it’s clear that the housing system has been threatened by low economic growth, low fertility, and low interest rates, challenging urban landscape. With respect to the socioeconomic phenomenon, the research examines the state’s institutional shifts characterized as path dependence and also identifies structural forces affecting urban transformation, particularly dynamics in household and housing sectors. In doing so, this research uses a wide range of data and the findings provides a profound understanding of the state’s opportunities and challenges in housing and urban setting.
Aging Korea and Its Prospects on Urban Growth or Shrinkage
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kyeongmin Choi, Hyunjeong Lee
Economic development from 1962 aggressively carried out rapid industrialization in South Korea and accordingly a speedy urbanization stirred fast expansion of small or large cities. Having been facing uneven development across the territory, the nation has suffered from unexpected outcomes and been forced to seek for equally sharing fruits of economic growth throughout it by establishing and implementing the national territorial development plan. In fact, two economic crises in recent decades have been coincided with structural transformations, and socio-demographic change entailed by economic slowdown poses a new challenge of urban management in many cities. A growing number of cities, especially small cities, suffer from depopulation and vacant housing resulting from the erosion of an industrial base and its job loss, and many have to depend on public subsidy from the central government in order to maintain public services and infrastructure at an adequate level which further may be not just to delay shrinkage but also to restore urban growth by attracting investors and companies with job creation. With an increasing number of elderly and a fertility rate dropping below replacement rate, the nation predicts urban shrinkage in some areas, and it’s important to strategically identify cities which are likely to be inflicted by it. This research will assess cities by using a wide array of indexes in association with urban growth, and seek for ways to make cities sustainable.
