The Seoul city government will draw up a citywide strategic plan to speed up groundbreaking for the Moa Town initiative being pursued at 137 sites. As of the end of July, management plans for 85 sites had been approved and announced, but the pace of translating them into actual dwellings supply has been slow. Seoul said it will establish a management system comparable to the basic plan for urban and residential environment maintenance, which is applied to large-scale redevelopment and reconstruction, to systematically resolve factors delaying projects, such as profitability, resident conflicts, and a lack of infrastructure.
According to Seoul city officials on the 5th, the city is carrying out the "Moa Town initiative strategic plan development service." The service period runs through Oct. next year with a budget of 800 million won. The city will prepare the strategic plan by Mar. next year and refine related guidelines and management plans from Apr. to Oct. the same year. It is not a statutory plan that must be established by law.
A Seoul city official said, "For the Moa Town initiative to enter the execution stage, including full-fledged groundbreaking, it needs institutional backing to match," and added, "The aim is to draw a big-picture plan for all of Seoul by establishing a small-scale maintenance plan comparable to the basic plan for urban and residential environment maintenance and the urban regeneration strategic plan."
The Moa Town initiative is a project that groups together aging low-rise residential areas of 100,000 square meters or less, where large-scale redevelopment is difficult, into a single living zone for maintenance. Actual maintenance projects move forward at the level of individual "Moa housing" sites within a Moa Town initiative. Lacking infrastructure such as roads, parks, and parking lots is expanded according to the Moa Town initiative management plan. In that it bundles multiple maintenance projects into a single zone for management, it is similar to a redevelopment promotion district.
According to the status of the Seoul Moa Town initiative, as of the end of July there are 137 Moa Town initiative sites underway in Seoul. Of these, 85 have had their management plans approved and announced, surpassing 60% of the total.
Actual groundbreaking, however, has been slow. Gangbuk District's Beon-dong, the first pilot project site, is representative of where construction has begun in earnest at the Moa Town initiative level. The second pilot site, the Moa Town initiative in Myeonmok-dong, Jungnang District, aims to begin relocation at the end of this year and break ground in the first half of next year. At the level of individual Moa housing project sites, 16 have entered the groundbreaking stage.
Through the strategic plan, Seoul will identify the causes of delays for each Moa Town initiative and categorize them by local characteristics. The city will support securing resident consent and establishing associations, and will also prepare deregulation measures suited to project conditions.
A roughly 300,000-square-meter "superblock," bounded by arterial roads and traversable on foot within 15 minutes, will also be used as an analysis unit. The aim is to lay out infrastructure such as roads, parks, and parking lots at the living-zone level beyond individual Moa Town initiatives.
Seoul is also pursuing deregulation to improve project profitability. In July, Moa Town initiatives that meet certain conditions—such as being near transit stations or along arterial roads—were upgraded to quasi-residential zones, and when supplied together with purchased rental dwellings, floor area ratios can be applied up to a maximum of 500%. Height limits in some Type 2 general residential zones were also eased.
The city will also implement a "Moa Town initiative rapid integrated promotion plan" to speed up individual projects. For new projects, it will introduce "Moa integrated planning," which carries out the establishment of the management plan and the formation of an association simultaneously, reducing the time from candidate site selection to groundbreaking from the current six years to four years and six months.
Experts note that the strategic plan should focus on removing on-the-ground obstacles such as low profitability, cost-sharing burdens, resident conflicts, and a lack of infrastructure.
Seo Jin-hyeong, a professor in the Department of Real Estate Law at Kwangwoon University, said, "Small-scale maintenance projects struggle to achieve economies of scale, and resident conflict and pushback are relatively strong," adding, "Given that there are cases where projects are halted or candidate site selections are canceled due to resident conflicts, it is necessary to craft detailed mediation measures."