Jeeeun Ha

Greenbelt in Korea

Mar 29, 2012

Greenbelt as a Development Management Tool

What is Greenbelt? Among the vast array of policy instruments to manage urban growth and protect open space, urban containment policies, which refer to creating geographical constraints on urban growth (Pendall, Martin, & Fulton, 2002), are probably the most direct ways to deal with the problems associated with sprawl. According to Pendall et al. (2002), there are three strategies to implement containment: greenbelts, urban growth boundaries (UGBs), and urban service areas (USAs). A greenbelt refers to a physical area of open space such as farmland, forest or other green spaces that surround a city or metropolitan area that is intended to be a permanent barrier to urban expansion. It is the most restrictive form of urban containment policy, and development is strictly prohibited or regulated on greenbelt land. It can be created through public or nonprofit acquisition of open space or development rights, or be created and enforced by regulating private properties (Bengston & Youn, 2006). A greenbelt is different from an UGB in that it is a physical space rather than a dividing line and intended to be permanent. UGBs are typically drawn to accommodate expected growth over time, and the boundary is reassessed and expanded as needed (Bengston & Youn, 2006). A greenbelt is also different from an USA, the most flexible form of urban containment policy, which tends to be more concerned with geographical sequencing of growth rather than its constraint by linking urban growth to the provision of urban infrastructure (Pendall et al., 2002). The simple idea of surrounding an urban area with a band of undeveloped land first gained prominence through its association with the Garden Cities concept of Ebenezer Howard in the late 19th century, and, later in the 1940s, a greenbelt was established to contain urban growth in London through the Greater London Plan by Patrick Abercrombie (Amati, 2008). Since then greenbelt ideas have spread to other countries in Europe, Asia, Oceania, and North America (Ali, 2008). This paper will focus on the greenbelt policy implemented in Korea, where the policy has been in place for almost 40 years, followed by a brief review of greenbelt policies in other countries and evaluation of the greenbelt as a development management tool. Koreas Greenbelt Policy Background Back in 1970, Richard L. Meier, a leading US regional planner at the time described the rapid urbanization that Korea was going though as follows: Nowhere else in the world today are the processes of urbanization so intense, so compressed in time, as in the capital of South Korea. The flow of people to Seoul has been at flood stage for sixteen years... This willingness to adopt new ways in a new environment creates a new pressure cooker for modernization in the metropolis (Meier, 1970).

Jeeeun Ha

Greenbelt in Korea

Mar 29, 2012

After the rapid industrialization and economic growth began in the early 1960s, the population living in urban areas increased from 37.2 percent in 1960 to over 50 percent in 1970 (Kim & Kim, 2008). The expansion of the urban areas to accommodate the growth with low-density singledetached housing resulted in uncontrollable urban sprawl. About 700 hectares of farm land were encroached by urban development every year during the urbanization (Choe, 2004a). The population growth was particularly significant in the capital city of Seoul, growing at an average annual rate of 7.6 percent from 1950 to 1975 (Bengston & Youn, 2006). Realizing that systematic growth management was desperately needed to prevent problems caused by relentless sprawl, the Korean government introduced greenbelt system in 1971 under the name of the Restricted Development Zones (RDZs), largely borrowed from the British greenbelt system. The main objectives of the RDZs were to prevent urban sprawl, to protect agricultural land around cities, to preserve natural environment, and to pursue balanced growth through decentralization, which were similar to what the British greenbelt policy was aiming for. There was one unique objective, however, that Korea added for national security, which was to encourage population dispersal from the Seoul metropolitan region, as more than 40 percent of the nations population was then living within the range of ground artillery attack from North Korea (Choe, 2004a). Greenbelt Policy Implementation To establish the RDZs, the government revised the City Planning Law1 and relevant enforcement ordinances in 1971. After the revision, the RDZ zones were hastily designated around Seoul and thirteen other cities from 1971 to 1973 without the consent of local governments, citizen participation, and analysis on the land suitability and current land use (Choe, 2004a; Choi, 2002). As of 1998, a total area of 5,397 km2 (about 1.3 million acres) was designated as the RDZs, which accounted for 5.4 percent of total land (Choi, 2002). Although there were variations depending on the local circumstances, the following seven general criteria2 were used in the RDZ designation (Choi, 2004):
1

Figure 1. Map of RDZs

In principle, the RDZ area should have at least 100 m (about 328 ft) of altitude. Minimum areas needed to protect agricultural land or to form a belt can be designated as an RDZ even if the altitude is below 100 m. Parks and open spaces that were already planned should be incorporated into the RDZs.

Korea had a dualistic land planning law system, under which the City Planning Law governed matters related to urban land use, and the National Land Use and Management Law for non-urban land use. In 2002, the government passed the National Land Planning Law that consolidated the two laws to provide a unitary planning control system for urban-rural continuum (Choe, 2004b). 2 The article by Choi is written in Korean and the translation provided here for the seven criteria is not official.

Jeeeun Ha

Greenbelt in Korea

Mar 29, 2012

Areas that need to be protected for national security reasons should be incorporated. Existing residential areas should be avoided as much as possible. Areas that are likely to co-urbanize with neighboring cities should be included. Current level of developments and local conditions should be taken into consideration.

The restrictions imposed on the greenbelt areas in the early phase of the policy were quite exhaustive, which made it impossible even for residents to build a new house or to repair a crumbling roof of an existing house (Choe, 2004b). Some of the restrictions were eased over time to resolve the inconveniences of residents, and Table 1 shows the current development control in place. Table 1. Development Control in the Greenbelt (adapted from Kim & Kim, 2008) Classification Banned development activities List of activities 1. Construction of new buildings 2. Installation of facilities 3. Alteration of land use 4. Land subdivision 5. Cutting trees for lumber 1. Construction of buildings and facilities for public use 2. New construction or installation of NYMBY facilities 3. Installation of facilities for agriculture and fisheries 4. Extension, reconstruction, change of use, of houses, existing at the time of designation 5. Reconstruction and change of use for non-residential buildings and facilities 6. Transferring construction of demolished buildings and facilities by public development 7. New construction of facilities to improve residential life 8. Alternation of land character not in violation of original purpose 9. Land separation without new construction

Permitted development activities

Legal, Economic, and Social Issues of Greenbelt Although the greenbelt policy produced many benefits such as a wide range of ecosystem services such as air purification, habitat and biodiversity protection, flood control, water supply and quality, and promotion of compact urban development (Bengston & Youn, 2006), it also has become a symbol of all that is wrong with the Korean planning system (Gallent, & Kim, 2001) due to several legal, economic, and social issues it has brought about. The following is the summary of the most prominent issues: Legal Issues. Due to severe development restrictions, land prices have plummeted to about one-fifth of those on both sides of the greenbelts (Choe, 2004b). Despite the loss of development rights that was almost tantamount to a taking, the successive governments passively neglected the voices of residents and land owners for nearly three decades because they did not want to open up this contentious issue. The

Jeeeun Ha

Greenbelt in Korea

Mar 29, 2012

government finally took it seriously when the Constitutional Court, the highest court in the nation, ruled in favor of three dairy farmers residing in 40 km west of Seoul that the limitations on the use of greenbelt areas without compensating landowners properly went against the constitution in 1998. The ruling required the government to revise the City Planning Law to include measures on how to compensate the landowners for their losses, and banned additional designation of greenbelt areas until the revision. However, the court did not rule that the current greenbelt system itself violated the constitution (Korea Herald, 1998). In response to such ruling, the government enacted the special act with regard to the designation and use of greenbelts in 2000, which included an option for greenbelt land owners to have their land purchased by the government when the utility of land is seriously compromised due to the greenbelt designation. Economic Issues. Greenbelt policy has always been attributed to the rising land and housing prices by limiting the supply of developable land. Studies produced mixed results. An econometric study by Kim, Mills, and Song (1986) estimated that a 1 km outward movement into the inner edge of the greenbelt, which would add about 14 percent to Seouls developable land, would reduce housing prices in Seoul by 2.7 percent, which is quite modest reduction. Another study by Son and Kim (1998) concluded that greenbelts are the main cause of urban land shortages in Korea rather than natural constraints such as mountains. Despite such mixed results, it seems clear that greenbelt policy is one of many supply-side restrictions that put upward pressure on land and housing prices. Also, greenbelts policy has contributed to the creation of satellite cities surrounding Seoul. Although such decentralization was one of the intended results of the policy (Pendall et al., 2002), it incurred huge commuting costs for people who live beyond the greenbelt and work in Seoul (Bengston & Youn, 2006). Social Issues. The lack of participatory process and arbitrary decisions made during the initial delineation of RDZs caused a serious inequity within local areas and initiated longer-term political unrest. Often, boundaries split villages and communities in two, leaving half of the local population stranded within the RDZ, while the other half enjoyed unhindered development rights (Gallent, & Kim, 2001). Also, the greenbelt policy raises the issue of equity for the Korean society as a whole regarding who pays and who benefits. The greenbelt landowners clearly have borne unjust share of the cost, but people outside the greenbelt also suffered lack of affordable housing (Choe, 2004a).

Greenbelt Policy Reform Despite many problems, South Koreas greenbelt policy has remained essentially unchanged for almost thirty years due to lack of open, public discussion on the issues. A full-scale reform efforts gained momentum when Kim, Dae Jung, the opposition party candidate, made a campaign promise to review and reform the greenbelt policy during the presidential election in 1997. After President Kim took office, the National Committee for Green Belt Policy Reform was established in early 1998, consisted of greenbelt residents, an environmental group representative, scholars, government officials, and journalists. Following an yearlong process of meetings, the Committee submitted a draft report that recommended the policy to be

Jeeeun Ha

Greenbelt in Korea

Mar 29, 2012

maintained as a growth management tool, but zones to be lifted around small and medium cities with little development pressure, and the boundaries to be redrawn based on environmental assessments and other local factors, and villages above a certain size within greenbelts to be given special permission for developments needed to improve their communities (Bengston & Youn, 2006). This report generated quite a controversy among residents and environmental groups. Without any agreement to satisfy all the stakeholders, the government unilaterally announced a new RDZ policy in July, 1999 that would eliminate greenbelts around seven small and medium cities, and redraw greenbelts in the seven larger cities based on environmental assessments (Choe, 2004a). So far, a total of 1,502 km2 of land (371,152 acres, about 28% of original RDZs) has been released (MLTM, 2011). Greenbelt in Other Countries United Kingdom Although the idea was there from the late 19th century in the U.K., it took almost four decades that the concept appeared in legislation (the Greenbelt Act of 1938), and six more years before it was formally proposed in the 1944 Greater London Plan by Abercrombie (Hecimovich, 2008). The 1947 Town and Country Planning Act allowed statutory greenbelt to be applied elsewhere than around London, and, in 1955, Duncan Sandys, the Minister of Housing and Local Government, asked planning authorities outside London to establish clearly defined greenbelts (Morris, 1997). Currently, 15 cities have surrounded themselves with greenbelts, and a bit less than 13 percent of all the land in England is protected from intensive development by greenbelt status (Hecimovich, 2008).

Figure 2. UK Greenbelt Map

According to Hecimovich (2008), the establishment of Englands greenbelt was the culmination of nearly a half-century pressure from environmental groups to preserve English countryside and historical sites from the threat of urban sprawl. This is quite different from the situation in Korea where the policy was simply handed down from top to bottom without any support from the grassroots, and also one of the reasons why the policy enjoyed high popularity for quite a long time in the U.K. Even those who were living within a greenbelt at the time saw the character of their towns protected from the problems associated with city living rather than encroachment upon their property rights. The compensation issue was addressed much early on in the 1938 Greenbelt Act, which allowed local authorities to enter into covenants with landowners regarding restrictive use of land to pay compensation and to buy land for the greenbelt (Morris, 1997). Despite such popularity, the policy is not beyond criticism. While the greenbelts were able to constrain the physical expansion of cities, they led to multi-nucleated settlements, which

Jeeeun Ha

Greenbelt in Korea

Mar 29, 2012

resulted in high degree of inter-urban commuting costs and air pollution, although such creation of satellite cities was one of the intended consequences of greenbelts policy, similar to that of Korea. Sometimes, the displacement of contiguous development has led to the preservation of poor quality land on the urban fringes at the cost of development in rural landscapes (Bae, 1998). Also, studies have shown that it is quite costly to maintain greenbelts. It is estimated that 3 percent of GNP is consumed in maintaining the London Greenbelt. Similar to Korea, constraining development led to increased housing cost, and it is estimated that new homeowners pay more than $500 a year more in mortgaging servicing costs than if the greenbelt did not exist. Finally, lack of incentives for the landowners to maintain their land leads to the emergence of unsightly brown landscapes in greenbelt areas. These criticisms demonstrate that even in England, where greenbelts originated and continue to receive substantial public support, they remain a mixed blessing (Bae, 1998). United States Case in Boulder, Colorado Only a few communities in the U.S. have conscious greenbelt policies, and the most prominent case is Boulder, Colorado, where both regulation and public acquisition were used to establish and maintain a blue line around the city for more than forty years. In 1959, the city amended its charter that prohibited the city from extending water service above 5,750 feet elevation to keep development from creeping up the mountains west of the city. Also, the city adopted a series of increase in sales tax to purchase land, which resulted in preserving nearly 29,000 acres in the city and an additional 55,000 acres of unincorporated land. Along with land acquisition, the city capped annual building permits issuance designed to limit its annual population growth to 2 percent or less and imposed a citywide height limit of 55 feet in 1976 (Pendall et al, 2002). By the 1990s, the city was close to built out at its current density, and housing prices have risen dramatically. Also, the growth pressure pushed out of the city created satellite cities, leading to 55 percent of the citys workforce commuting outside the city limits, and, ultimately, creation of a new county called Broomfield in 2001. Although the citys aggressive policy encouraged a systematic approach to protecting open space that has matched land acquisition and land regulation in classic greenbelt fashion, lack of regional coordination led to the inevitable and unintended development of open spaces and creation of satellite towns (Pendall et al, 2002). Evaluation of Greenbelt as Development Management Tool Efficiency and Effectiveness Greenbelts policy is not efficient in that it requires a lot of resources to implement such as technical resources to conduct suitability analysis on which areas to designate as a greenbelt, establishment of regulation that provides clear delineation criteria and adequate compensation scheme for landowners in the greenbelts areas, and financial resources for land acquisition and compensation. In places where land price is already high, forming greenbelts will cause huge financial burden on jurisdictions. Greenbelts is more effective than other containment policies in terms of protecting valuable green spaces by strictly prohibiting development, but can cause further sprawl by spurring growth much further away from the city core and creating satellite cities. In the case of both

Jeeeun Ha

Greenbelt in Korea

Mar 29, 2012

England and Korea, the urban containment policy was viewed as part of an overall plan for regional decentralization very much along the lines originally envisioned by Ebenezer Howard who saw urban containment as part of a regional system that would constrain the size of the central city, protect agricultural belts outside the city, and redistribute some population growth in an orderly fashion into "new towns" outside the greenbelt. In the U.S., however, where urban containment policies are adopted to avoid leapfrogging development, greenbelt policies are likely to cause unintended consequences as in Boulders case (Pendall et al, 2002). Equity A greenbelt policy, particularly the delineation of greenbelt areas, unaccompanied by democratic participatory process to gather local input could cause serious equity issues as it did in Korea. Also, proper compensation mechanism for landowners and residents within the greenbelts and adequate policies to provide affordable housing options outside the greenbelts should be in place along with the greenbelts policy to promote equity. Political Feasibility A greenbelt policy puts a huge imposition on private property rights, which makes it extremely difficult to implement without much popular support. In Korea, such unilateral and undemocratic process in creating greenbelts was possible only because Korea was under the leadership of authoritarian government at the time of RDZ designation (Bengston & Youn, 2006) and the concept of protecting private property ownership was not fully developed. The example of Tokyo, where the attempts to implement greenbelt policy foundered twice in 1946 and 1956 in the face of fierce opposition from landowners and most municipalities surrounding Tokyo (Watanabe, Amati, Endo, & Yokohari, 2008), shows that the policy must garner enough public support before its implementation. New Perspectives on Greenbelt A new perspective is emerging on greenbelts in the U.K., where the greenbelt policy was originated, that the policy should focus on green gaps, green wedges, and buffers instead of a continuous belt (Hecimovich, 2008). Such change of views seems to be based on the realization that the rigidity of forming a ring around the urban area led to the inclusion of areas that are not worthy of protecting simply for the sake of forming a belt. Also, it is based on the reality that redeveloping brownfields and government-owned land will not be enough to satisfy the estimated need for housing. Natural England, a non-departmental public body and the governments conservation advisor, proposed in its policy paper in 2007, that the concept of green spaces that makes up the greenbelt needs to be redefined, and pushed for the idea of a physical and functional connectivity of green spaces that would link green areas from within cities out into the countryside, which would promote ecological diversity, greater use of green infrastructure, and multifunctionality (i.e. use of greenbelt area for recreation, a nature reserve, and a floodwater detention area). Ultimately, this calls for a regional planning between the town in the greenbelts and the urban areas that they surround (Hecimovich, 2008). It remains to be seen whether such change of view would be translated into policies in complex political landscape regarding the greenbelt concept in the U.K.

Jeeeun Ha Sources

Greenbelt in Korea

Mar 29, 2012

Amati, M. (2008). Urban Green Belts in the Twenty-first Century. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company. Ali, A. K. (2008). Greenbelts to Contain Urban Growth in Ontario, Canada: Promises and Prospects. Planning, Practice & Research, 23(4), 533-548. Bae, C. C. (1998). Koreas Greenbelts: Impacts and Options for Change. Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal 7(3), 479-502. Bengston, D. N., & Youn, Y. C. (2006). Urban Containment Policies and the Protection of Natural Areas: The Case of Seouls Greenbelt. Ecology and Society 11(1): 3. Choe, S. C. (2004a). The Thirty-years experiment with British greenbelt policy in Korea: A Convergent Path to Sustainable Development. Pages 83-90 in Urban Sprawl in Western Europe and the United States edited by Richardson, H. W. & Bae. C. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company. Choe, S. C. (2004b). Reform of Planning Controls for an Urban-rural Continuum in Korea. Pages 253-266 in Towards Sustainable Cities: East Asian, North American, and European Perspectives on Managing Urban Regions edited by Sorensen, A., Marcotullio, P. J., & Grant, J. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company. Choi, W. B. (2002). Urban Planning Implication of Conurbation and Green Belt Policy: The Case of Greater London and Seoul. (Masters Thesis). Hanyang University. Gallent, N. & Kim, K. S. (2001). Land Zoning and Local Discretion in the Korean Planning System. Land Use Policy 18, 233-243. Hecimovich, J. (2008). Green Belts or Green Wedges? Planning, 74(3). 40-43. Kim, J. & Kim. T. K. (2008). Issues with Green Belt Reform in the Seoul Metropolitan Area. Pages 37-57 in Urban Green Belts in the Twenty-first Century edited by Amati, M. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company. Kim, K. H., Mills, E., & Song, B. N. (1986). Korean Government Policies toward Seouls Greenbelt. Working Paper 86-2. Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements, Seoul, ROK. Korea Herald (1998, Dec 25). Court Grants Compensation for Greenbelt Landowners. Retrieved from http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=100&oid=044&aid=0000008369 Meier, R. L. (1970). Exploring Development in Great Asian Cities: Seoul, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 36(6), 378-392. MLTM (Ministry of Land, Transport, and Maritime Affairs). Policy Information retrieved from http://www.mltm.go.kr/USR/policyData/m_34681/dtl?id=68 Morris, E. S. (1997). British Town Planning and Urban Design: Principles and Policies. Harlow, Essex, England: Longman. Pendall, R., Martin, J., & Fulton, W. (2002). Holding the Line: Urban Containment in the United States. The Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy. Washington, D.C., U.S. Son, J. Y. & Kim. K. H. (1998). Analysis of Urban Land Shortages: The Case of Korean Cities. Journal of Urban Economics 43(3), 362-384. Watanabe, T., Amati, M., Endo, K., & Yokohari, M. (2008). The Abandonment of Tokyos Green Belt and the Search for a New Discourse of Preservation in Tokyos Suburbs. Pages 21-36 in Urban Green Belts in the Twenty-first Century edited by Amati, M. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company. UK greenbelt map picture, http://greenfieldgeography.wikispaces.com/IGCSE+Settlements