In May 2026, eight sites in Incheon's old downtown districts were selected through South Korea's national urban regeneration competition. The selection process is genuinely competitive: local authorities and community groups make the case for their area, a national panel assesses the strength of the regeneration plan, and funding follows the plans that demonstrate the clearest path to self-sustainability. This is not formula-driven grant distribution. It is a contest with stakes.
The funding that follows is conditional on performance. Sites are expected to demonstrate progress toward self-sustaining economic activity — reduced dependency on public subsidy, increased private investment, measurable improvements in resident wellbeing. The programme is not indefinite. It is a time-limited intervention designed to de-risk early moves and attract the private capital and commercial tenants that will carry the place forward when public support withdraws.
Anti-demolition by design
What makes the Korean model distinctive is its explicit commitment to working with existing building stock rather than clearing and rebuilding. This is partly pragmatic — demolition and new-build is expensive, slow and disruptive — and partly philosophical. The Korean programme operates on the assumption that old town centres have embedded social and economic value that is destroyed when buildings are flattened, and that regeneration which preserves physical character while updating economic function produces better long-term outcomes than comprehensive redevelopment.
The evidence base for this is growing. Research on Korean urban regeneration sites over a ten-year period shows stronger resident retention, higher levels of community engagement and more durable economic activity in areas that followed the adaptive reuse model compared with areas that underwent comprehensive redevelopment. The numbers are not dramatic. But they are consistent.
The Korean Research Institute for Human Settlements publishes English-language summaries of its urban regeneration research. The evidence base on adaptive reuse versus comprehensive redevelopment is particularly relevant for UK practitioners working in secondary towns where heritage assets are part of the regeneration case.
KRIHS research →The resident participation model
Korean urban regeneration is unusually resident-participatory for a top-down national programme. Regeneration plans must demonstrate community involvement in their development, and community organisations — often led by long-term residents — are eligible to receive direct funding to deliver regeneration activities. This produces plans that reflect local priorities rather than national templates, and it creates a constituency for the regeneration process rather than a group of people waiting to see what happens to their neighbourhood.
This is a model that UK practitioners working under the Levelling Up agenda, or successor programmes, will find instructive. The UK has tended to treat community engagement as a planning requirement to be satisfied rather than a design input to be genuinely incorporated. The Korean approach suggests that genuine participation produces better plans, not just more legitimate ones.
What translates to the UK
The competitive selection model — where places make a genuine case for funding against a transparent set of criteria and are held to account for delivery — is directly transferable and would represent a significant improvement on the discretionary, politically influenced allocation of most UK regeneration funding. The anti-demolition principle aligns with growing heritage awareness in UK planning. And the performance management framework, unpopular as it sounds to local authorities used to grant funding without conditions, is the thing that makes the investment credible to private sector partners who need to know the intervention will not be abandoned before it produces results.
South Korea is not a policy environment that translates directly to UK conditions. But the underlying approach — targeted, competitive, conditional, participatory and explicitly committed to working with what exists rather than replacing it — describes a regeneration philosophy that most UK practitioners would recognise as more likely to work than the alternatives currently on offer.
Nick Bolton is Managing Director of Positive Places Ltd. Sticky Places is published fortnightly. Subscribe here.