SPACE November 2025 (No. 696)
‘Mobility’ has been a recurring theme throughout this series. In small and medium-sized (hereinafter mid-size) cities facing decline, improved mobility has opened alternative paths for survival. This final issue examines how mobility drives transformation in these cities. As road networks have expanded from urban to rural areas, mobile facilities such as school buses, laundries, and health centres now fill the gaps in dispersed settlements. Meanwhile, the elderly’s use of electric scooters as daily transport forms a new pattern in urban settlement that differs from that of the past. The neutral ‘station’ proposed by the Mid-Size City Forum marks the point where these two mobilities converge.
[Series] The Possibilities Inherent in Extinction, Mid-Size City Forum
01 What is Happening Outside the Metropolitan Area
02 Thinning Phenomenon
03 Urban Perforation
04 Erasing Plan
05 Ad-Hoc Architecture 1
06 Ad-Hoc Architecture 2
07 Global Mid-Size City
08 Temporary Mid-Size City
09 Mutation of Facilities 1
10 Beyond the Mid-Size City
11 Mutation of Facilities 2
Medical electric scooter driving on national highway
How does an aging population and the general decline in the population transform our existing facilities? Facilities originally built on the assumption of a stable or growing population are now struggling to be maintained and operated as populations rapidly decline and age. As basic daily services such as schools, hospitals, and stores close down, one after another, the functional cluster at the myeon centre is beginning to collapse. However, at the same time new possibilities are emerging. With the significant increase of road occupancy rates, accessibility to rural areas has improved, and the revision of the Motor Vehicle Management Act has enabled the development of various mobile facilities. Furthermore, the dissemination of medical electric scooters is expanding the range of movement for the elderly. These changes enable a new mobility-based service supply method from a traditional settlement system centred on fixed facilities. Currently, various types of mobile facilities – including mobile libraries, baths, and health centres – are operational as part of this shift. This issue will explore how rural areas experiencing population decline can transition toward a mobility-based settlement system, examining the potential revealed through the new flows and networks created by these facilities.
Decline of daily convenience facilities in myeon centre of a mid-size city (Juksan-myeon, Gimje-si, Jeollabuk-do). Clusters of daily facilities and public services in myeon centres are being dismantled.
The Disintegration of Settlement Systems
Human presence is disappearing from rural areas outside mid-size cities, leading to the dissolution of village collectivity and the disintegration of myeon centre clusters. In light of this, how can we sustain human settlement systems in such regions? Rural settlement systems have traditionally followed a hierarchical structure that extends from villages to rural centres (eup and myeon centres) and further to rural hub cities (si or gun).▼1 However, since the 1990s, this hierarchical structure has undergone significant change due to various social, technological, and economic factors. According to a study by the Korea Rural Economic Institute (KREI), when the population of a myeon falls below 3,000, problems begin to emerge in the local healthcare system and when it drops below 2,000, service-oriented businesses related to daily life, such as restaurants, bakeries, laundries, and hair salons, begin to close. Therefore, approximately 25% of eup and myeon areas in Korea are likely experiencing difficulties maintaining stable service supply related to daily necessities.▼2
As a result, the number of businesses providing services through commercial transactions, such as shops, financial institutions, restaurants, pubs, hair salons, and teahouses, primarily located in the rural central place, has significantly decreased.▼3 This has also affected the public services located in these areas. As the cluster that once combined public and daily services in rural centres has crumbled, these centres have been reduced in locations offering both everyday services and public functions to enable citizens to spend time in these areas. The status of lower-level centres has declined, and the previously multi-layered hierarchical settlement system has been simplified. As the role of the myeon centre fades in significance, a clear pattern has emerged wherein residents bypass it entirely, traveling directly from villages to eup or si centres.▼4
Despite these shifts, the overall road occupancy rate has continued to increase as new types of roads have been constructed in addition to national highways. Examining changes of the road occupancy rate over the past fifty years shows that until the 1970s only a small number of national highways connected cities. However, since the 1990s the construction of expressways, bypass highways, and provincial roads has significantly increased the total length of road infrastructure.▼5 As a result, drivers have gained more route options, and accessibility to remote areas has greatly improved.
Comparison of transport networks in Gyeongsangbuk-do, 1970 (left) and 2025 (right). Road density has increased significantly over the last 50 years, improving accessibility to rural areas.
Mobile Facilities
The traditional settlement system is based on facilities fixed at specific points. In this structure, administrative welfare centres, health centres, post offices, agricultural cooperatives, and police substations are located in rural hubs, supplying services to their surrounding environs. However, as the population declines, maintaining this system has become increasingly difficult. As the number of users decreases relative to the number of facilities, facilities become over-resourced. To address this imbalance between supply and demand, many public facilities have been consolidated or have reduced employees. For example, the police security centre in Omcheon-myeon, Gangjin-gun, Jeollanam-do was closed five or six years ago, and now only one person works at each of the public health centre. The post office is open only in the morning and closes after lunch. Its three staff members then move to the post office in the nearby Daegu-myeon in the afternoon to continue their working day.▼6 This method is rapidly spreading across post offices in agricultural areas with small populations.▼7
Of the public facilities located in myeon centres, police security centres have undergone the largest scale of consolidation. These centres, situated mainly in sparsely populated agricultural areas, are designed for one or two officers who stay or visit to respond to residents’ security needs. In 2023, the Korean National Police Agency announced a plan to close 576 of the total 952 security centres across the country, which is about 60.5%, by the end of the year.▼8
The consolidation of facilities increases the physical distance between service providers and users, extending users’ travel distances. When public services are concentrated at specific hubs, the jurisdictional area of each facility widens, producing pockets of underserved populations. Furthermore, staff reductions lead to excessive spatial burden per person, increasing the maintenance costs of facilities.
In this context, where population decline has made it difficult to sustain facilities, can fixed public facility systems remain effective? Should regions with declining demand for public services not consider a new way of delivering their services? Improved accessibility resulting from increased road occupancy rates allows for new operational approaches that can compensate for the service gaps created by facility consolidation. Compared to the past, expressway networks have greatly expanded, road paving rates have improved significantly, and the types of national highways have diversified, dramatically enhancing connectivity within rural areas. Therefore, instead of assigning each myeon unit a single fixed public facility, perhaps a more viable system today would be one in which a single ‘mobile facility’ moves between two or more myeon units to provide services. (...)
Simplification of hierarchical settlement systems due to weakening functions of myeon centre, new road construction, and the development of navigation systems. A clear pattern has emerged wherein residents bypass myeon centres entirely, traveling directly from villages to eup or si centres.
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1 Choe Yangboo and Chung Chulmo, Settlement System in Rural Areas and Development of the Settlement Center, Korea Rural Economic Institute (KREI) (1984).
2 Han Yicheol et al., Measures to Expand Basic Living Services in Depopulated Rural Areas, KREI (2022), p. 102.
3 Kim Jeongho et al., ‘Vision of 2030/2050 Agriculture and Rural Sector in Korea’, Policy Research Report, KREI, 2010.
4 Ibid.
5 Lee Janghwan and Lee Sanghyun, ‘Beyond the Mid-Size City: The Architecture of the Non-Human’, SPACE 694 (Sep. 2025), p. 110.
6 Bang Gukjin, ‘Population Falls to 400 in a Myeon… Extinction Crisis of the Region’, The Naeil News, 11 Sep. 2025.
7 Shin Harim and Kim Kwanghee, ‘Increase in Half-Day Post Offices in Rural Areas Raises Concerns Over Regional Extinction’, Kangwon Ilbo, 9 June 2023.
8 ‘Downsising of Police Security Centers Should be Reconsidered’, The Farmers Newspaper, 1 Nov. 2023.
