토지공개념과 밀도규제 - 계획가치론적 비판 -

Apartment prices in Seoul have been well over four times its supply price for the last twenty years, while undermining the housing affordability of lower income households. We attribute the exorbitant prices to density control and reject the popular claim that they were caused, in particular, by greedy speculation for land and housing. Using mathematical models and the existing literature, we argue that the stringent density control as practiced in Seoul is not compatible with the planning values of equity, compact development, housing affordability, efficiency, and economic growth. This sweeping conclusion largely follows from the fact that density control inside Seoul encourages metrowide sprawl and that densification inside Seoul is socioeconomically and environmentally cheaper than the sprawled development. Consequently, density control inside Seoul goes against the general direction of smart growth. This implies that with no deregulation of the density control, strengthening the publicness of land alone would fail to break up the very mechanism generating the non-smart growth.