Qualitative changes in participatory governance by urban policies : Focusing on the case of Bongsan Village, Yeongdo-gu, BMC

This paper examines the urban regeneration policies and implications of many years of urban regeneration in Yeongdo-gu, Busan, a post-industrial city, with a focus on resident participatory governance. Bongsan Village, the target area of this study, is an area that has undergone many years of urban policies such as the Village Creation Project and the Urban Regeneration New Deal Project after the New Town Project was canceled. Residents of Bongsan Village voluntarily organized local governance to solve local problems. However, after participating in urban regeneration policies for five years, the activities of Bongsan Village governance shifted to profit-making businesses, and in the process, the residents’ organization established a governance system with external businessmen. The purpose of this study is to identify the key factors that led to the qualitative change in resident participatory governance, focusing on the case of Bongsan Village. The contradiction in the urban regeneration New Deal project area is caused by the conflict between the instrumental function of governance (urban regeneration promotion system) and the intrinsic function (enabling resident participation). The background is that the central government expanded the goal of urban regeneration policy to local job creation, and the local administration centered on some residents for efficiency. In this process, the majority of residents who lack experience in policy participation were excluded from the decision-making stage, and inequalities among residents were deepened. This paper describes the qualitative changes in the governance system of residents in the urban regeneration area of Bongsan Village in Yeongdo-gu, BMC over the 13 years since 2013, when a residents’ organization was voluntarily formed to participate in the urban regeneration project. In particular, this paper identifies key factors that influenced local residents’ participation in the process of institutionalizing governance and explains how governance changed through a diagrammatic representation. By examining the scope of residents and the original meaning of urban regeneration, we reconsider the future direction of urban policy and propose a form and scope for collaborative governance that can expand participation across residents.