Week 2. Seoul Urban Land Supply and Land Readjustment with Gangnam Development Case
 
<Land Readjustment Module 2>
 
After Seoul decided to expand its boundaries, we needed practical tool to transform its lands into urban lands with proper infrastructure to support the people and their activities. Now I will explain the Farmland Consolidation, which was a precursor to Land Readjustment and I will go over some of the conceptual aspects of Land Readjustment.
 
Farmland Consolidation began far earlier than 1960’s. As you see in the picture, Farmland Consolidation’s main function was line change, shape change. What it meant was that the geological or geographical traits of the lands remained the same although physical modifications were made to its infrastructure.
 
The picture on the left shows the rice fields from the days before Farmland Consolidation and the picture on the right shows the same rice field after Farmland Consolidation has took place. But the most important consequence was the increase in productivity, which increased by 5.4 percent.
 
Labor input decreased by 32.8 percent and production costs decreased by 14.3 percent. So that meant that with the same amount of land, we could produce more with less labor and less costs. Just the re-arrangement of the lines yielded substantial development. As you can see here from the left to the right, there’s no huge change but just a change of lines
 
With this change, we could use new machines, new technologies and easily supply water to each piece of land, which lead to the increase in productivity. So this is the basic concept of Land Readjustment. The key issue concerning Land Readjustment was replotting.
 
The plots changed from left to the right. Before, the shapes of plots were irregular and the public spaces were smaller, but with the change in shape we gained more public spaces. This process involved contributions from each owners. The contributed lands were used for public facilities and financing of the project.
 
In this diagram you can see the original owner with an irregular piece of land. But after Land Readjustment, the original owner is given back some portion of the original land near its original location while what remains of the contributed lands were used for public facilities and financing the project. After Land Readjustment, each plot became more productive.
 
This meant that each plot can hold more housing units and more commercial and industrial activities. As a result, each plot became more valuable, which meant that each plot yielded more income. This was what made Land Readjustment work.
 
I’ll explain it a little bit further in later slides. This kind of idea could be applied to both the new areas and the existing urban areas alike. This is the concept of replotting, especially focusing on the acquisition of lands for public space.
 
A good city tends to be made up of about 50 percent public space. But in a non-urban area, the most important problem is the lack of public space and the need for acquiring new lands. There are two methods of going about acquiring land which are Land Acquisition and Land Readjustment.
 
I will compare the two methods. I will go over the typical characteristics of lands before developments. The streets are not wide enough, which may cause problems in emergencies and flow of transportation. These gray areas are where the original roads were constructed.
 
Land parcel B and H have limited access. Shapes of some parcels are not suitable for development. The shapes are irregular so it is difficult to accommodate housing. The land value is lower than developed areas. So we want to transform this land to have wider streets and better public space.
 
These are the two typical methods in bringing about such change. But with the acquisition method, land owners A and G must move out because their lands are located within the newly built roads. And also land owners K and J’s lands become too small.
 
They end up with just a small piece of land. And land owner I’s land parcel must be divided into two parcels. So the Land Acquisition method ends up burdening some land owners. But Land Readjustment collectively pulls the lands and replots them back to its original community and everyone can stay in their original community and enjoy the benefits of development equally.
 
The shape of land parcels are improved and the rows are also improved. Especially the lands that belonged to owners B and H did not have access to a street formerly but now they have access to the transportation trunk. So this kind of change is fairer for the land owners and allows everyone to enjoy the benefits of development. In this sense, Land Readjustment is more beneficial than the Land Acquisition method.