Toward Sustainable Neighbourhood Design: Examining Shinjung Environmentally Friendly Housing Estate Development Project

Since the late 1990s Korean housing authorities and private companies have been pursuing various initiatives towards sustainable neighbourhood design, however, there has been no attempt to examine their progress. This research aims to suggest a sustainability evaluation framework and analyse the progress of sustainability of a cutting edge project: Shinjung Environmentally Friendly Housing Estate Development, using that framework. The results of the analysis suggest that the project failed to make Significant progress in the sustainability evaluation criteria compared to normal projects in Korea and there exist significant barriers: economic/financial barriers; institutional/structural barriers; and implementation barriers within current planning and design practices. Most of the project's design strategies were simply adopted and used as a marketing tool without public participation, sustainability targets or benchmarking for sustainability. Furthermore, most of the responsibility for maintenance was left to residents who normally lack the knowledge, experience, interest and money to carry out such tasks. These problems cause significant concerns over the future success of the project toward sustainability. The experience of the Shinjung project also highlights the need for a more proactive central and local government stance towards sustainable neighborhood design.