[Deep EYE] New city promotes urban collapse... It's flat, but the population is shrinking.

The declining population of our society is both a harsh present and a sad future.

Symbolic indicators appeared.

Ten million Seoul, which never seemed to collapse, was broken.

As of the end of last year, Seoul had a population of 9.91 million, and 10 million fell in 32 years.

In the midst of this, house prices have soared due to the shortage of supply according to the regulation policy.

In the era of population decline, soaring house prices seem to be an inconsistent phenomenon, but in any case, the government announced a new city construction plan to stabilize house prices.

It was an ambitious plan to catch the surge in house prices in one shot, but as it became known that some LH employees used internal information to hit a player with speculation at the new town's planned site, the third new town is becoming a mud before it was born.

It is necessary to look forward to a rigorous investigation by the relevant authorities to deal with the speculative situation, and to ask a fundamental question as to whether the new city is a permanent solution to the housing problem.

new city does not mean creating a new city, but rather a new large-scale residential complex around an overcrowded city.

Anyway, if you add a new city to the previously presumed population decline factor, you will get a simple physical result.

As the city plan area increases, the population is dispersed.

In a situation where the city is losing vitality due to the stagnant or declining population, if the existing city population is dispersed back to the new city, the vitality of the entire city will inevitably decrease.

In the old city center, not only infrastructure such as hospitals and schools, but also living economy areas such as restaurants, convenience stores, clothing stores, academies, coffee shops, lodging establishments, and movie theaters are more likely to enter into time-limited management due to deterioration in business.

This phenomenon is very evident in small and medium-sized cities with a population of 2,300,000 or less.

In fact, this was the case in some of the cities I looked around for two years ago.

The representative place is Mokpo.

Mokpo is a city with many things to see.

The old city center of Yudalsan is full of Jeoksan houses, historical sites, and museums, full of the fragrance of modern and contemporary Korean history.

When viewed from Yudalsan, a small mountain called Geumgangsan, you can see the Yeongsan River and Samhakdo Island at once.

It is called a roofless museum and stimulates the so-called retro sensibility, but it is difficult to see people even during the day, and people disappear from the road or nearby shopping districts at 7pm.

Only colorful road decorations made with money to attract tourists illuminate the city without people.

Then, where did Mokpo people and tourists all go?

In the evening of the same day, at 7 o'clock, the Hadang area, a new city in Mokpo, was quite vibrant.

Residents and tourists of the newly built apartments around the beach stroll along the beach and watch the fountain show.

The owners of nearby shopping malls were also quite busy selling food and supplies.

However, the merchants in the new town of Hadang were also worried.

This was because the Namak New Town was re-established in the vicinity, and the population was spreading back to it.

Mokpo's population was 220,000 as of the end of last year.

In 10 years, the number of people decreased by 20,000, but the city was getting bigger and bigger due to the successive new town development, so the whole city was losing vitality like a flat balloon.

This phenomenon is common not only in small and medium-sized cities, but also in large cities now.

There were times when it was absolutely necessary to construct a new

large-scale new city

.

This is to respond to the surge in housing demand and housing prices due to rapid growth and population growth, and to supply better quality housing to the public.

However, I don't think it's a policy option to put priorities anymore in Korea at the time of its declining population.

In terms of efficient use of the narrow land, new cities are an option that should be avoided as much as possible.

Nevertheless, whenever the real estate market becomes unstable, it is often a political product that a new city is mentioned like a special drug.

If you redevelop or rebuild the old city center instead of developing a large-scale new city, you can efficiently utilize the narrow land area while maintaining the city density to some extent.

However, it can be politically burdensome because it can lead to a sense of relative deprivation that the existing owners enjoy preferential treatment, as it is difficult to mediate conflicts among stakeholders.

For this reason, whenever a real estate problem breaks out, the government or local governments throw a win-win deal with the construction of a new city.

This is advantageous in two ways.

First, it can relieve the burden of troublesome conflict resolution and controversy over preferential treatment.Second, building a large-scale apartment in a spacious residential area is a ``poor'' in terms of publicity from the standpoint of the government and local governments.

is common sense that it is helpful for the national economy to increase housing to some extent according to the inflation rate.

That way, assets will grow and consumer sentiment will improve.

However, the recent surge in house prices has exceeded common sense and precision.

The reason is that normal supply was not achieved due to a policy of unilateral regulation.

It seems difficult for the current government to escape the criticism of rushing to develop a new city that is politically less burdensome than reconstruction or redevelopment in order to cover the policy failure at once.

In the meantime, it is even worse that some LH employees' speculation broke out.

The declining population is a harsh reality.

Planar expansion in the age of population decline is no different from the loss of urban muscles.

Now, instead of the political anesthetics of a new city, the government should consider how to compress the city and use it efficiently while maintaining the proper density to give vitality.

That is a policy choice that truly comforts the people, including small businessmen suffering from coronavirus.

(Photo = Yonhap News)