도시재생 연구의 사례지 동향 그리고 향후 연구 방향

Urban Regeneration Studies in South Korea: Focusing on Study Areas

The numbers and investments for Urban Regeneration projects, including New Deal initiatives (URNDP), have increased after establishing the Special Act on Promotion of and Support for Urban Regeneration in 2013. Academic studies need to carefully explore these regeneration projects to support, evaluate, advance the future progress of urban regeneration. Given that, this study attempts to synthesize what sorts of places were studied in the previous literature, which possibly recognizes the municipalities or areas that require further in-depth scholarly observation. The characteristics of the study areas of 123 articles published urban regeneration studies and the association to URNDP and cities’ growing/shrinking trend of the population were explored. The outcomes are three-fold; 1) the total number of urban regeneration studies and the case study areas have been growing, but many of them leaned to Seoul Metropolitan and other large cities; 2) continually declining small towns were designated as URNDP and received huge investment, but the studies of these cities were scarce, and 3) “research blind spots” were found where studies and projects have never happened despite the depopulation. Accordingly, the results of this study may suggest that scholars endeavor to investigate more diverse areas, and the part of the URNDP fund should be devoted to promote academic investigations for depopulating small towns.