Press

On the 6th and 7th of last month, the 'so.dosi' team, which is preparing a domestic travel guide business for foreign tourists at Localize Gunsan, conducted an action day to test their ideas in practice. 'What will we do after government support ends?' Recently, urban regeneration projects have been gaining momentum nationwide, but simultaneously, more activists and residents are concerned about what happens after project completion. This is due to the burden of needing to create a self-sustaining local ecosystem within 3-4 years when government subsidies are provided. Local activists emphasize that 'the government cannot and does not want to provide subsidies forever,' and 'for sustainable urban regeneration, it is important for community-based social enterprises, social ventures, and cooperatives to take root in areas where administrative agencies cannot reach.' Social enterprises excavating local content... connecting village to village The social enterprise 'Indi053' is a cultural and arts organization operating mainly in the Daegu and Gyeongbuk regions. To address regional decline, they uncover village stories and diverse personal histories, creating content from them. They teach literacy to grandmothers and connect it to literary content. In Chilgok, about 400 grandmothers are receiving literacy education with an average age of 78. These grandmothers who belatedly learned to write had their poems published in 2015 as 'What is Poetry,' becoming a nationwide sensation. They also record traditional laundry site songs disappearing into history and stage them in village theater productions. Differentiated content in each village serves as the foundation for community activities. Lee Chang-won, CEO of Indi053, says, 'Currently, 9 out of 25 humanities villages in Chilgok are apartment complexes. Rural seniors offer their vegetable gardens to apartment residents, and apartment residents purchase agricultural products through direct trade, exchanging with each other.' Some experts prescribe 'administrative indifference' for effective urban regeneration. Yoon Joo-sun, associate research fellow at the Architecture and Urban Space Research Institute, states, 'Some degree of administrative indifference is necessary to minimize the side effects of uniform regeneration projects that don't consider regional characteristics.' A representative success case he cites is the bicycle hotel 'Onomichi U2' in Hiroshima, Japan. 'Onomichi City in Hiroshima Prefecture long-term leased its city-owned maritime warehouse to local young people in 2014. Onomichi entrusted not just planning, design, and construction, but also maintenance management entirely to the youth. They created a bicycle hotel with their own ideas, and now it has become a mecca for cyclists worldwide.' From government-centered to private-centered... social ventures followed by large corporations Urban regeneration in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province also draws attention. Cheonan was selected as a leading urban regeneration area in 2014, but even at the initial stages of the project, there was considerable turmoil with five staff changes including the urban regeneration support center director. Subsequently, residents formed a consultative body, and with social enterprises and cooperatives helping, the project was able to move in the right direction. Youth is at the center of Cheonan's urban regeneration. The urban regeneration specialist cooperative 'Cheonan Youth' spreads awareness of regional development potential to youth while supporting youth entrepreneurship. 'There are over 100,000 young people in 11 universities in the Cheonan area alone. The problem is that they have little interest in the Cheonan region. Even if there are good local government projects for youth, college students don't know about them. As this repeats, they stop thinking about regional development potential.' Choi Kwang-woon, CEO of Cheonan Youth, teaches 'Cheonan Studies' at universities in the region. Cheonan Studies is an academic discipline researching Cheonan's identity and development potential, including its history, humanities, geography, culture, and industry. The response is enthusiastic. Recently, there has been a surge in college students seeking advice on social venture and social enterprise startups. 'Youth Real Estate Agency,' operated by Cheonan Youth, provides rental information as well as free regional networking and business consulting to young people starting businesses in the original downtown. Of course, concerns remain about the sustainability of social economy organizations. This is because cities can only continue regeneration projects if they can generate stable revenue locally. Cheonan Youth employs a strategy to attract private capital to urban regeneration projects. This is because social enterprises and local cooperatives have a large proportion of public competition projects in their overall business, so they can end up in a vegetative state if they fail to win a project bid. CEO Choi says, 'We receive sponsorships from construction companies, manufacturing, and retail companies based in the region and operate projects,' and 'Although we take a cooperative form, we do not operate with member fees.' There are also cases of large corporations stepping up to transition government-led urban regeneration projects to the private sector. Energy company SK E&S is conducting a social venture fostering project called 'Local:Rise' with Underdogs, a social innovation startup education specialist. This is the first time a private company has undertaken urban regeneration projects to foster social ventures. Gunsan in North Jeolla Province was selected as the first city. This project, which began last January, involves a total of 24 teams and over 70 people, including 11 'incubating' teams to discover new businesses and 13 'accelerating' teams to develop existing businesses. Lee Seul-gi, director of Underdogs, states, 'Not just Gunsan youth but also young people from other regions without local connections have participated in the project in significant numbers.' Kim Ki-young, head of SK E&S's Social Value Division, says, 'Starting with Gunsan, we plan to discover customized innovation projects that focus on social issues in various regions nationwide.'