Almost every city has neighborhoods and sites that have become disinvested or otherwise underutilized. Such areas can contribute to blight, reduce a city’s attractiveness and livability, detract from its economic base and competitiveness, and marginalize certain residents. A key challenge for city leaders is how to revitalize these underutilized areas and, in so doing, unlock these sites’ latent value and contribute to the city’s fiscal, social and environmental sustainability. Drawing on recent research by the World Bank on successful cases of urban regeneration as well as experience of selected cities in Japan, the Technical Deep Dive (TDD) on Urban Regeneration brings together representatives from cities in World Bank client countries to exchange experiences on planning, financing, and implementation of urban regeneration projects. Participants include practitioners and decision-makers from World Bank client countries, Task Team Leaders (TTLs), and experts from Japan and other countries who will share experience, challenges and solutions related to regeneration of urban areas.
The goal of this week-long Technical “Deep-Dive” is to enhance city decision-makers’ knowledge and technical capacity to implement urban revitalization initiatives, particularly with respect to identifying viable business models for implementation that can also maximize the government’s economic and policy goals. The program will provide a conceptual and practical overview of (a) the real estate development process, including discussion of how real estate market dynamics affect timing and feasibility of potential projects; (b) how to incorporate real estate market data into government decision-making regarding land use planning and release of public sector land for development; and (c) applying these concepts and skills to ongoing urban regeneration initiatives.
The program will explore Japanese, Korean and global examples of governments’ strategies to spur regeneration, including cases focused on urban regeneration catalyzed by: development or relocation of government assets, construction of new parks and/or civic space, and repurposing former industrial sites.
The program is being organized by the Tokyo Development Learning Center (TDLC) in collaboration with Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) of Japan, Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG), Korea Research Institute on Human Settlements (KRIHS) and Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG). TDLC supports and facilitates strategic WBG and client country collaboration with select Japanese cities, agencies and partners for joint research, knowledge exchange, capacity building and other activities that develop opportunities to link Japanese and global expertise with specific project-level engagements in developing countries to maximize development impact. The program is global in reach and thematically focused on urban planning, urban service provision, urban management, social development, land and territorial policy and municipal finance.