Introduction

The Urban RegenerationProject (도시재생사업, URP) in South Korea(hereafter Korea) officially begun in 2013 with theenactment of the Special Act on Urban Regenerationin 2013. The central government proclaimed that theURP demonstrates a shifting paradigm of urban policy(MOLIT, 2013; URIS, 2015). The previous ‘paradigm ofurban policy’ mainly referred to the market-ledcomprehensive redevelopment approach in improvingderelict areas, as well as the government-ledtop-down planning process prevalent in the overallpolicy process (MOLIT, 2013; Park and Kim, 2014). Inthe marketled comprehensive redevelopment projectwhich had been the mainstream method forneighbourhood improvement since the 1980s,decision-making has been highly dominated byproperty owners but excluded the tenants (Shin andKim, 2015). Despite its contribution to the dramaticimprovement of the physical environment, strongcriticisms have been presented to the exclusivenature of the approach for tenants in both processand outcome, which in the end resulted inlarge-scale displacements and destructions ofexisting communities (Ha, 2004; Byeon, 2012).Against this background, calls for a more inclusiveand incremental approach of urban regeneration haveincreased (Jeong, 1999; Ha, 2001; Byeon, 2012; Park,2015). Moreover, this change needs to be understoodwithin the context of the political change at themacro-level. The demise of an authoritarian and therise of a democratic state have caused a fundamentalchange in the relation between the state and civilsociety in the overall policy process, and theemergence of the URP was not free from this changeat the macro-level.