Definition
In Korea, jaegaebal (redevelopment) is an urban renewal project under the Act on the Improvement of Urban Areas and Dwelling Conditions. An entire neighborhood of old houses with poor infrastructure, such as roads and water and sewer lines, is torn down, the streets are widened, parks are created, and new apartments are built. Under the law, projects that renovate run-down commercial and industrial areas to revive their urban function (urban-renewal-type redevelopment) also count as redevelopment. It goes beyond putting up new buildings and completely renews the living environment of the whole neighborhood.
Roads and water pipes get replaced first
Walk through an old alley and you may find a neighborhood where a single fire truck can barely squeeze through and there is nowhere to park. It is not only the houses that are old. When it rains, the sewers overflow, and streetlights are so scarce that walking at night is dangerous.
In a place like this, tearing down a few old buildings and rebuilding them will not make it a good place to live. The streets are still cramped, and no one knows when a pipe might burst. That is why it takes a project that replaces the neighborhood's infrastructure from the ground up, including roads, water pipes, and parks.
Redevelopment clears away the whole old layout of a worn-down neighborhood and redraws it from scratch. When the project is finished, wide roads, green parks, and safe large apartment complexes replace the narrow alleys, and the whole look of the neighborhood changes completely.
How is it different from reconstruction?
Many people think of redevelopment and reconstruction (jaegeonchuk in Korean) as similar, but they start from completely different conditions. The easiest way to tell them apart is "how usable the neighborhood's infrastructure is."
For example, take an apartment complex that is over 30 years old, worn and cracked, but surrounded by wide roads and well-equipped with water and sewer lines and schools. There, you can leave the surroundings as they are and just tear down and rebuild the buildings. That is reconstruction.
Redevelopment, on the other hand, takes place where not just the houses but the basic environment of the neighborhood, such as roads and pipes, has completely broken down. Since the whole neighborhood has to be overhauled, it has a much stronger public character, and the law strictly sets out things like rental housing for tenants and compensation procedures.
To be a bit more precise: public interest and conflict
To be a bit more precise, redevelopment is not just digging up land and putting up buildings. Residents who lived there form an association, obtain permits, and move out before demolition, which usually takes a long time of more than 10 years and a complicated process.
The deepest worry in this process is that the original residents have a hard time staying in the new neighborhood. When they cannot afford the construction costs and the sale price of the new homes, it is easy for existing residents and small shopkeepers to be pushed out to other run-down neighborhoods, a phenomenon called gentrification.
That is why recent redevelopment policy is moving away from simply tearing down everything old. It is trying to raise the rate at which existing residents resettle, and to require that public rental housing be built above a certain share, looking after both the gains from development and housing stability.
Common misconceptions
Redevelopment and reconstruction are the same thing, since both build new buildings.
The key difference is the surrounding infrastructure (roads, water and sewer lines, and so on). If roads and pipes all have to be overhauled, it is redevelopment. If the surroundings are fine and only the buildings are rebuilt, it is reconstruction.
If you own a house in a redevelopment zone, you are sure to make a lot of money.
If the project drags on for more than 10 years, construction costs and loan interest can grow, and you may have to pay a large additional contribution. Depending on the project's profitability, you can even end up losing money.
Where you meet it
A project that tears down a narrow hillside slum where fire trucks could not enter and builds a large apartment complex, a park, and wide roads in its place
A project that renovates an entire district of old villas that flooded whenever it rained, burying new water and sewer pipes and turning it into a new residential complex
In one sentence
Redevelopment is an urban project in Korea that tears down and rebuilds not just old houses but the whole neighborhood infrastructure, such as roads and water and sewer lines.