The Seoul city government asked the central government to ease nine regulations that have blocked the supply of dwellings.
The Seoul city government said on the 15th that it asked the Office for Government Policy Coordination to include the previously separate "environmental impact assessment" and "fire performance-based design assessment" in the integrated review by the integrated public housing review committee, which is required to approve public housing project plans. The city argued that because the two assessments are reviewed separately now, approval of project plans is delayed by about six months.
It also asked for an exemption from the preliminary feasibility assessment for establishing a public library when pursuing a complex project to rebuild an old public library along with building public dwellings on local government property sites.
It also asked to increase the number of residential floors in urban-type studio dwellings from five to six. In addition, it proposed easing the daylight diagonal restriction and inter-building distance standards for small dwellings, including "regional and workplace housing cooperatives" among the management and oversight targets of local governments, and granting public officials "special judicial police powers" over cooperatives.
Lee Jun-hyeong, Seoul City's director of regulatory innovation planning, said, "It is urgent to improve regulations on multiple fronts, such as removing repetitive procedures and unrealistic standards and firmly blocking illegal acts by cooperatives and redevelopment projects."