Gwangju-type Urban Regeneration New Deal Project Brings 'Vitality' to Downtown

Gwangju City to Invest 1.7 Trillion Won in 15 Projects Including Baegun Square by 2025

This Year, Construction to Start on 85 Key Facilities Out of 196 Projects, 73 Scheduled for Completion

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Seon-gang] The Gwangju-type urban regeneration New Deal project is revitalizing the stagnated downtown area.

Approaching not just as simple residential environment maintenance but also through housing welfare, urban competitiveness, social integration, and job creation, it is rapidly emerging as a new alternative for a sustainable urban community.

According to Gwangju Metropolitan City on the 15th, since the New Deal project competition began in 2017, 3 sites were selected in 2017, 5 in 2018, 4 in 2019, and 3 in 2020, totaling 15 project sites where a total budget of 1.7 trillion KRW will be invested by 2025 to carry out the New Deal projects.

This year, the city is investing 202 billion KRW, including 34.6 billion KRW in national funds, to implement various projects such as creating safe streets, improving pedestrian environments, renovating old houses, and providing shared spaces for residents.

Based on local governance, hardware projects such as land acquisition, design, and completion are underway to provide convenience facilities for residents.

Among the 196 unit projects across the 15 New Deal sites, 85 facility projects are scheduled to start construction this year, and 73 projects will be completed within the year.

Yangnim-dong is set to complete the ‘Youth Creation Center’ as a cultural complex exchange space, Dongmyeong-dong will complete ‘Dongmyeong House’ as a youth complex support space, Wondosan will complete the ‘Dorume Eoullim Platform’ to support village community activities, Nongsong-dong will complete the ‘Cherry Blossom Eoullim Center’ as a village community center, and Im-dong will complete the ‘Beodeuri Eoullim Center’ as a shared facility, all serving as representative hub facilities of the New Deal project this year.

Specialized designs incorporating local history and storytelling are applied to create themed streets, and safe streets are being established through CCTV installation and other measures.

In particular, projects reflecting residents’ opinions to renovate old alley floors and design villages through mural projects are being completed in various locations.

This year, 436 parking spaces will be created to address illegal parking and improve street environments, and 31 security lights will be installed to ensure safe streets. CCTV and unmanned parcel lockers will be installed at 17 locations.

Especially, as part of the Buk-gu university town-type New Deal project, the public parking lot construction project in Jungheung-dong, Buk-gu, currently in detailed design, will provide about 200 parking spaces in a two-story above-ground structure on a 3,530㎡ site near the Hyojuk public parking lot around Buk-gu Office, with an investment of approximately 5.3 billion KRW. This is expected to greatly help alleviate chronic parking shortages and revitalize the local commercial district.

The Baegun-dong area plans to create a media facade using the outer wall of Nam-gu Office, and the Jeonnam National University university town area is expected to see the full-scale launch of smart shared parking through a traffic operation system improvement project incorporating lifestyle-oriented urban regeneration smart technology (IoT).

The home repair support project selects households mainly in residential areas such as Yangnim-dong, Sajik-dong, and Nongsong-dong through on-site inspections and selection committee reviews, improving the residential environment by repairing the exterior of old houses.

Last year, 55 households in Yangnim-dong and 18 households in Jungheung-dong were selected for repairs including fences, roofs, and gates, and a total of 212 households in Nongsong 1-dong and Nongsong 2-dong completed home repairs.

This year, it is expected that 622 households across all New Deal project sites will improve their residential environment through old house renovations.

The home repair support project allows residents to improve their residential environment by receiving support for exterior house repairs such as fences and roofs in New Deal project areas by bearing 10% of the project cost.

Gwangju City is creating a sustainable urban regeneration promotion model by promoting various resident capacity-building projects such as the Urban Regeneration University and resident proposal contests.

Notably, the Gwangju Station economic base-type project, expected to drive downtown industry and jobs, is conducting various educational programs targeting residents, merchants, youth, and universities, while the Jeonnam National University university town-type project is promoting educational projects to establish a foundation for startups to revitalize Jungheung-dong and surrounding commercial districts.

Seonam-dong and Im-dong areas are promoting Urban Regeneration Universities tailored to the characteristics of their regions to discover various project participants.

Last year, Gwangju University was finally selected in the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport’s urban regeneration professional manpower training project competition, and to continuously and systematically nurture convergent urban regeneration talents, it will support the operation of master's and doctoral courses related to urban regeneration for five years until 2024.

This year marks the first year of the training project, and Gwangju University plans to nurture 29 new students as convergent talents by establishing master's and doctoral courses in Urban Regeneration and Real Estate Studies.

Im Chan-hyeok, head of the city’s Urban Regeneration Policy Division, said, “This year is a period when many hub facilities will be completed and highly perceptible projects will be finalized. We will make efforts to create successful models for each project, provide consulting on project implementation processes, record and monitor project changes, and discover and share successful models so that they can spread throughout the city.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.