SUWON — Gyeonggi Province Governor Choo Mi-ae said a sweeping overhaul of current rules is unavoidable if residents are to move into the third-phase new towns on schedule, and formally submitted 13 regulatory reform proposals compiled by the province to the National Assembly and the central government. The centerpiece is writing into law an exemption from preliminary feasibility studies for wide-area transit projects tied to new towns.
Gyeonggi Province held a policy forum on the 28th at the first seminar room of the National Assembly Members' Office Building, titled "Following the Government's Aug. 13 Measures: Strengthening Self-Sufficiency and Speeding Up the Third-Phase New Towns." About 150 people attended, including Governor Choo, National Assembly members Seo Young-suk, Kim Yong-min and Han Jun-ho, Gyeonggi provincial council members Jang Song-hoe and Jung Hyun-mi, along with residents and urban planning experts. The forum was co-hosted by lawmakers Lee Jae-jung, Seo Young-suk, Kim Sung-hoe, Kim Yong-min, Kim Hyun, Lee Kwang-jae, Ahn Tae-joon, Han Jun-ho, Cha Ji-ho and Kim Nam-gook, and organized by Gyeonggi Province and Gyeonggi Housing & Urban Development Corporation (GH).
In opening remarks, Choo said, "What we looked at alongside transportation measures was whether residents can actually move into the third-phase new towns on time, and when we checked, there were so many areas where regulatory reform was urgent that we sorted them by priority and drew up 13 tasks." She added, "People always talk about 'transit first, move-in later,' but to push ahead with wide-area transit facilities you have to go through a preliminary feasibility study, and 12 years, 34 years slip by in the meantime." She said that under the current system, "transit first, move-in later" is effectively impossible.
She particularly stressed that "it makes no sense for the state to announce an urban plan and then later say, 'Get a separate feasibility study for the transportation measures.'" Since transportation measures should already have been reviewed together when the new town plan was finalized, she said, "there is a need to establish a legal basis for exempting new town projects from preliminary feasibility studies."
She also outlined ways to secure self-sufficiency. "Gyeonggi Province needs to secure ample industrial capacity to attract companies, and use the province's authority to recommend companies to increase jobs," Choo said, explaining that "if that happens, commuting demand concentrated on Seoul will naturally decline." She also asked for the National Assembly's cooperation, saying that "since these are public housing projects taking place in Gyeonggi Province, GH should be able to participate fully in line with its capabilities."
The 13 tasks cited were discussed at a related policy meeting on the 4th of this month. They include replacing land and building documents with electronic data to shorten compensation procedures; expanding local governments' participation and authority in public housing projects; exempting projects confirmed under wide-area transit improvement plans from preliminary feasibility studies; and designating a district and a corporate relocation complex together by drawing up plans for both the companies to be relocated and the relocation complex at the same time a public housing district is designated.
The forum was chaired by Koo Ja-hoon, a professor at Hanyang University's Graduate School of Urban Studies, and Lee Ji-hyun, a policy adviser to Gyeonggi Province, gave a presentation on "On-the-Ground Regulatory Reform Tasks for the Rapid Supply of Third-Phase New Towns." The general discussion included Lee Eun-sun, director general of Gyeonggi Province's urban development bureau; Park Jin-ho, head of the public housing site management division at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport; Choi Jun-yeop, head of the first new town business department at Korea Land & Housing Corporation (LH); Park In-kwon, head of the urban planning strategy department at GH; and Nam Ji-hyun, a research fellow at the Gyeonggi Research Institute. They discussed supplementary steps to make the government's rapid supply policy work in practice, along with ways to expand jobs and living infrastructure.
In its Aug. 13 measures, the government said it would break ground early on 89,000 units at existing public housing sites by 2030 by moving up or running in parallel the procedures for developing public housing land. It also aims to cut the time from the announcement of candidate sites to groundbreaking to about 37 months from roughly 68 months.
Gyeonggi Province plans to compile the views raised at the forum and the tasks identified on the ground, and continue consultations on regulatory reform with the National Assembly, the central government and related agencies including LH and GH. Ahead of the event, Choo visited the Changneung public housing district in Goyang to review progress on housing construction, with the first move-ins set for December 2027, as well as pending issues affecting the project such as the relocation of a military base and soil remediation.
