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Policy Directions for Revitalizing Small and Medium Sized Cities in an Era of Population Decline
Park Sehoon, Cho Manseok, Song Jieun, Im Junhong
Key words: Small and Medium Sized Cities (SMCs), Population Decline, Shrinking City, City System, Urban Regeneration
In recent years, small and medium sized cities (SMCs) in Korea are facing new challenges posed by globalization and population decline. Particularly, provincial SMCs located in the non-capital region of the nation have difficulties in maintaining competitiveness and supporting people’s quality of lives. This report examines the current conditions of SMCs in terms of demographic change, industrial development and spatial structure, and suggests policy measures to revitalize distressed SMCs.
The 40 provincial SMCs are categorized into the three types based on analysis with criteria of population size, population change, and industrial structure, which are regional centers, industrial hubs, and small cities. Regional centers which have been political and commercial centers from traditional years, have managed to maintain population size for the last two decades thanks to population influx from neighboring rural areas. Industrial hubs have witnessed robust population growth propelled by strong manufacturing industries development. However, small cities, mostly with population under 300,000 and weak industrial fundamentals, are struggling with population decline and job loss. Financial capacities and land use patterns are also differentiated by categories with regional centers and industrial hubs showing strength against weak performing small cities.
SUMMARY ․ 93 On the other hand, most SMCs are commonly experiencing the expansion of their daily commuting zones and tightening network with neighboring cities measured by transportation activities. Especially, industrial hubs are strong in this trend. Also many SMCs are stick to pursuing suburban development and relocating key public facilities to newly developed areas in a bid to put a spur on urban development, albeit obvious trend of population decline and aging. This means the city policies does not match with the nation’s demographic trend.
In the past 5 decades, the national government have made a lot of efforts to support underdeveloped areas by introducing various regional development policy measures.
However, most policies have focused on so called ‘lagging regions’, which are consist of rural areas and islands. In this regards, the SMCs are sidelined from the government’s policy attention because these cities have been categorized as developed
‘urban’ areas. It is noted that the previous government have launched ‘happy living zone’policy to encourage inter-city cooperation among SMCs. This is a meaningful attempt but impact are limited as this policy dealt with only small scale voluntary projects.
This report suggests the four policy directions for revitalizing the SMCs, particularly focused on the type of small cities. First and foremost, government policies of the SMCs should be altered toward building‘network and partnership’among neighboring cities rather than supporting individual cities. For this, the concept of city-regions as a unit of policy support need to be introduced, and the spatial concept of center-periphery needs to be applied in most city policy areas. Secondly, central part of cities are should be enhanced functionally and economically by concentrating public projects in the city centers. Current trend of suburban expansion with decentralized public facilities need to be re-examined. Thirdly, SMCs should enhance policy measures for job creation by taking advantage of cities’ competitive edge.
Particularly, for the type of small cities, cultural and historical assets need to be developed and promoted more and better for urban revitalization. Lastly, national and city governments need to extend policy support for community development in declining cities. Vital communities are key in maintaining quality of lives in declining cities. Community assets should be developed, community empowerment activities should be more supported, and senior citizen should be better taken care of.
