The Incheon Metropolitan Government has opened an online participation platform to continuously reflect residents’ views in drawing up the 「2045 Incheon Urban Master Plan」, which will shape the city’s future two decades from now. The key change is that, rather than confining participation to a one-off procedure held at a specific point in time, anyone can now submit opinions from the earliest stages of the plan, regardless of when or where.
 [코리안투데이] Guide to the operation of Incheon’s ‘2045 Incheon Urban Master Plan Citizen Participation Platform’ © 장형임 기자 |
The Incheon Metropolitan Government (Mayor Park Chan-dae) announced that it is operating the 「2045 Incheon Urban Master Plan Citizen Participation Platform」, through which residents themselves diagnose local issues and help shape the direction of the city’s future development.
The platform was created to continuously gather residents’ everyday experiences and the needs of their communities during the process of establishing the 「2045 Incheon Urban Master Plan and District Plan」, and to reflect them in actual urban planning. Until now, gathering residents’ opinions on urban planning had been limited to a single round held at a specific time, such as a public hearing or a public inspection period. Incheon has replaced this with a standing communication system that allows opinions to be submitted online and via mobile devices, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, from the earliest stage of drawing up the plan.
The platform runs from August 18, 2026 to July 31, 2027. Residents who wish to take part can submit their views through the ‘Incheon Full of Communication > Citizen Participation > Survey’ menu on the Incheon city website. Participants in the survey will be entered into a drawing for a mobile gift voucher worth 5,000 won.
The first survey focuses on the area where each resident currently lives, asking about ▲the facilities they use most often ▲the facilities they consider most necessary going forward and ▲open-ended opinions on their local living environment and needed facilities. The facilities covered are those closely tied to residents’ daily lives, including parks, libraries, cultural and sports facilities, community centers, welfare facilities, schools, public parking lots and public health centers.
Incheon plans to analyze the opinions gathered in this way in depth by area of residence, in order to understand facility-use patterns and demand in each living zone. The findings will serve as basic data for setting development strategies for each living zone in the 「2045 Incheon Urban Master Plan and District Plan」, and for reviewing the supply of social overhead capital (SOC) and investment priorities. In effect, this opens a channel through which the inconveniences residents feel in their own neighborhoods can be translated into the placement of and investment order for everyday infrastructure such as libraries, parks and parking lots.
The platform will not end with this single survey but will continue to operate. Incheon plans to gather residents’ opinions on major pending issues and policy directions at each stage of drawing up the urban master plan, and to link this with the deliberative process of the citizen and resident planning groups.
Incheon Mayor Park Chan-dae said, ‘The urban master plan is the most fundamental guiding plan that will determine Incheon’s future 20 years from now, and its starting point is the improvements and changes residents feel are needed in the neighborhoods where they live.’ He added, ‘I ask for your keen interest and active participation so that residents’ voices can become the foundation for redrawing Incheon’s future spatial strategy.’
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