Basic Report

  
  
  
   Some non-traditional factors such as creativity or amenity become recognized as core competitive base and possibility for regional development. This is the response of local governments and regional societies to economic globalization. Regions entered the period of brutal competition each other due to further progress of the globalization promoted by the IT development and financial liberalization since the late twentieth century. Efficient transportation infrastructure or low labor costs do not contribute to the stability of regional economy. However, regional-specific factors such as knowledge and amenity become appeared as one of core regional development elements since those hinder or disable easier imitation of other regions.
   In particular, amenity among region-specific factors as a counteractive force to the globalization enables a region more attractive to high-value added economy. OECD or a group of scholars like Gottlieb (1994, 1995) explain the positive relationships of amenity with regional development. According to the research, amenity-abundant regions report higher degree of growth and involve in the activities of more high-tech and advanced industries than other regions. Amenity-abundant regions successfully attract the industries by promoting the residential immigration of knowledge workers and professional workers rather than by lower costs of labor.
   Over the last decade some countries and regions in Europe or Japan have aggressively begun to introduce amenity for regional development. Likewise, several local governments in Korea also begun to recognize amenity as a core resource. They started to establish or carry out amenity-driven regional development plans and programs. However, amenity-driven development in Korea is in an initial stage yet and has short history, thus experiences of local governments with and the know-how of amenity utilization is not sufficient.
   In this context, the purpose of this research is to search for policy recommendations and measures for promoting successful amenity-driven strategies after analyzing the problems of current strategies of local governments related to amenity and exploring the success stories of some regions in Korea and foreign countries.
   For the purpose, this research conducts literature review, questionnaire survey analysis, examination of current policy. Through literature review amenity is conceptually identified and amenity-driven strategies are categorized based on their concrete goals. In this research, amenity is limited to as a resource for regional economic development. In addition, the feature and process of amenity-driven strategies are discussed. To examine the plans and actions of local government in relation to amenity, questionnaire survey is utilized.
   Chapter 1 addresses the background, objectives, methodology, and scope of this research. This chapter states clearly the focus of this research that is the amenity-driven strategies for economic development among other purposes.  Chapter 2 discusses existing literatures to formulate the analytic framework for amenity-driven strategies. The framework is constructed by the viewpoint of process: existence of amenity resources, selection of competitive amenity, establishment and implementation of the strategies including citizen participations, public relations and marketing of region's amenity-based product or features.
   Chapter 3 analyzes the current programs and institutional bases of central and local government. Questionnaire survey results of local governments can be summarized as follows. First, the recognition of local governments towards amenity-driven strategies is pervasive. Out of 126 respondents, sixty-seven percent of local governments reported introduction of or planned introduction of amenity strategies. However, still 33 percent of local governments do not consider amenity strategies as important. Rather than that, their priority is on direct economic supporting programs or lack of finance. Second, current amenity strategies are short-sighted and not various. Most frequently recognized expectations about amenity strategies are "sales growth in tourism" and "improvement of regional image", which is not combined with far-sighted expectations that improved amenity will attract population and industries from outside. Third, most local governments are not equipped with search and selection process of competitive amenity resources although most of the local governments answer similar amenity as their owns such as environment amenity and historic, cultural amenity. Forth, participations of residents and experts are ignored in the establishments and implementations of amenity strategies. Current amenity strategies are initiated by personal decisions of the presidents of local governments.
   Chapter 4 discusses the case studies of Europe (Menton, Tuscany, Yuhuin, and Wokiha) and Korea (Seocheon, Hampyeong, and Cheonggyecheon) to identify successful elements of their amenity strategies. The elements are as follows: (1) selections of amenity based on region-specific advantages and traditions, (2) spiral expansion that centered on core amenity after the success of core amenity strategies, and (3) coherent cooperative system involving progressive participations of citizens and experts.
   Chapter 5 suggests policy directions and measures for amenity-driven strategies based on the analysis of current policy frameworks, current strategies of local governments, and cases studies. Among several policy measures, core measures are as follows: (1) the construction of amenity resources database, (2) the inducement of comprehensive regional economic development plans focused on amenity, (3) the development of positive feedback between 'betterment of living conditions' and 'regional economic growth', (4) the development of cooperative implementation system between central and local governments, (5) incentives for participations of citizen and experts, (6) the development of demand-oriented marketing such as direct transaction, (7) the coupling of regions' amenity programs to programs of central governments, and (8) integrative institutional bases for amenity strategies.