An Intertemporal Efficiency Test of a Greenbelt: Assessing the Economic Impacts of Seoul's Greenbelt

Abstract

Greenbelts have been a widely used planning tool for preserving open space and containing the physical expansion of built-up areas. Al though both the economic costs and the ben efits of greenbelts have been studied, there have been no attempts to integrate the two. In this paper, I attempt to illummate the argu ment by measuring the aggregate net metro politan economic gain or loss (in both house hold utility and land value) of a marginal release of greenbelt land for development in Seoul, a city that has strong open-space pro tections and severe urbanization pressures. I present the calculation for four points in time to discover how the net benefit changes over the long run. The trend shows that Seoul's greenbelt achieved economic efficiency as the city grew, but lost economic efficiency once the congestion effect kicked in. I conclude that a fixed boundary for a greenbelt cannot be a net benefit forever, and thus the original greenbelt designation should be reexamined penodically.