A Revenue-sharing Model of Residential Redevelopment Projects: The Case of the "Hapdong" Redevelopment Scheme in Seoul, Korea

The city of Seoul has devised a distinctive scheme of residential redevelopment, the Hapdong (partnership) Redevelopment. Its market-oriented approach differs from conventional public residential redevelopment and can be characterised as an owner-initiated gentrification process. However, the chronic problem of relocation in residential redevelopment has been aggravated rather than lessened. Also, considerable amounts of the project's profits have gone to outside investors rather than to residents, changing the old equity battles in urban renewal into a revenue-sharing game in the market system. Their financial vulnerability means that most residents lose the game in a relative sense. This paper analyses the behaviour of the owners in the framework of personal financing strategy rather than from an advocacy-planning point of view. The results indicate that the high degree of owners' relocation was inevitable following the introduction of the market-oriented scheme.