Measuring Urban Redevelopment Sustainability: Exploring Challenges from Downtown Seoul

A main challenge for the design and building of green and smart cities is the redevelopment of existing built environments. This research investigates the usefulness of urban district sustainability evaluation systems in informing and guiding urban redevelopment projects. The German DGNB Urban District (DGNB UD) sustainability assessment and certification system has been chosen among others due to its comprehensive method to evaluate eight awarded projects from the “Re-structuring Seunsangga Citywalk International Competition” organized for Seoul’s downtown redevelopment. The results have been compared with the sustainability assessment of the district status quo and the competition call text, noticing a generic enhancement of sustainability. However, sustainability categories and criteria were not addressed sufficiently by any project in order to meet the integrated and holistic certification requirements of DGNB UD. The findings from this research emphasize the need for integrated assessment and measurements of urban sustainability, beyond projects’ self-promotion emphasizing greening or single sustainability facets. The research findings particularly exemplify how awarded project proposals might still be stuck in a specific, limited framework of sustainability. This paper concludes that balanced sustainability could be achieved by utilization of comprehensive assessment and evaluation systems in the preparation and assessment of plans.