“If You Build It, They Will Come”: An Analysis of Expansionary Construction Policies in South Korea’s Otherwise Shrinking Small-to-Medium Sized Cities

Abstract

This thesis explores the paradox of South Korea’s small-to-medium sized cities (SMCs), which have increasingly pursued footprint expanding policies, such as the development of suburbs and industrial parks, despite contracting populations and economic output. Such support and subsidization of physical expansion runs against established urban planning wisdom. Literature and policy precedents from the urban policy field suggest that shrinking, post-industrial cities are likely to best manage decline through rightsizing and compaction. In this thesis, I investigate the systems of framing and prioritization that might explain the puzzling policy decision on the part of South Korean policy makers to promote real estate growth instead in their shrinking SMCs.

I hypothesized, drawing on Harvey Molotch’s conception of the “city as a growth machine”, that expansion is more a symptom of rent-seeking rather than a genuine solution produced in good faith. In order to evaluate the validity of the hypothesis, in addition to survey analysis of statistical data, I examined a cross section of case studies drawn representatively from across geographic regions, size classes and socio-economic types. What I found was that the incentive and influence structures that allow elites who benefit from real estate development to predominate urban planning as described in scholarship are identifiable in South Korea’s SMCs.

The thesis concludes with a discussion of steps policy makers will have to take going forward in order to implement alternative policies and free SMCs from policy capture by special interests and land owning elites.