The Effect of Green Belt Policy Reform on the Seoul Metropolitan Area

Jeon, Jae Sik Korea introduced an urban containment policy in the early stage of urbanization to control growth of congestion and prevent urban sprawl in the Seoul Metropolitan Area (SMA). However, the arbitrary designation a lack of popular support or accurate scrutiny caused an irrational pattern of land use which reinforced concentrations and threatened residential stability in terms of restrictions on the land supply. Therefore, the Green Belt Area Law was legislated in 2000 and the deregulation has released the green belt area mainly for residential purposes. Although the existing researches dealt with the effect of green belt reform, none of them actually applied practical aggregate data set of the SMA including housing values and regional characteristics. In this sense, this study aims to analyze the effect of green belt reform on housing market in the SMA. Using panel data set from 2001 to 2010, the fixed-effect model is estimated. The estimation results suggest that the release of green belt land has decreased the average housing sales price while Seoul has larger partial effect than Gyeonggi. Furthermore, the serious discontinuity of population and employment as well as the job-housing mismatch can be improved under the condition that lowered housing price benefits the unprivileged to have more accessibility and opportunity for location decisions.