Survey of 76 Officials Reveals What Makes Urban Design Administration Work in South Korea and Japan

Urban design administration has expanded rapidly since the 2000s, as legal and institutional frameworks were strengthened and dedicated organizations grew within local governments. Yet researchers report that structural limitations persist in securing sustainability, governance, fairness, and administrative efficiency consistently across the full policy cycle. A new open-access study in Architectural Research, published on 30 October 2026, constructs an integrated operations and management system for urban design administration and empirically validates the relationships among its key principles using comparative evidence from South Korea and Japan.

The research team—Seokhyun Lee, Yoshiaki Kubota, and Changhee Ahn—argue that South Korea and Japan constitute rare and prominent examples of countries where dedicated urban design departments have been institutionalized and systematically operated at the local government level. Emerging from similar developmental state legacies, both nations share highly comparable administrative mechanisms and municipal structures across architecture, urban planning, and public design. According to the authors, Japan excels in long-term continuity supported by institutionalized machizukuri, a form of citizen-participatory governance, while South Korea exhibits distinctive strengths in top-down momentum and rapid project execution, making the cross-national comparison an ideal setting for examining governance, sustainability, and administrative efficiency.

Methodologically, the study proceeded in three steps. First, a literature review derived four core principles and corresponding measurement indicators. Second, institutional operations in South Korea and Japan were comparatively analyzed to identify distinctive administrative characteristics. Third, a survey was administered to public officials responsible for urban design-related administrative work in fields such as architecture, urban planning, public design, and landscape. A total of 76 valid responses were collected—46 from South Korea and 30 from Japan—using a five-point Likert scale. The data were analyzed through reliability testing, exploratory factor analysis, correlation analysis, independent-samples t-tests, and multiple regression analyses including mediation tests.

The four constructs were operationalized in detail. Policy sustainability comprised 12 items covering long-term roadmaps, consistency and continuity of project implementation, continuity of administrative assignment, post-project management and evaluation, reflection of local identity and community collaboration, and responsiveness to environmental and climate changes. Governance comprised 14 items addressing citizen participation and opinion reflection, interdepartmental collaboration, expert participation, public–private cooperation, sustained stakeholder involvement, transparency in decision-making, capacity-building, and conflict mediation mechanisms. Fairness comprised 13 items on transparency and consistency of procurement, commissioning, and review procedures, advance disclosure of review criteria, fairness in competition and evaluator selection, accountability and disclosure of review outcomes, and opportunities for objections. Administrative efficiency comprised 13 items on simplification and timeliness of administrative processes, procurement operability, reduction of redundant work, coordination across departments, linkage between design and construction, maintenance management, planned budget execution, systematic record management, and clarity of task allocation.

The measurement model demonstrated adequate reliability and construct validity. The suitability of the data for factor analysis was supported by a Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure of 0.758 and Bartlett’s test of sphericity (χ2 = 1310.599, df = 465, p < 0.001). Exploratory factor analysis using principal component extraction with Varimax rotation yielded a four-factor structure aligned with the conceptual framework. Internal consistency, assessed with Cronbach’s alpha, exceeded commonly accepted thresholds for all constructs: governance (α = 0.883), fairness (α = 0.834), sustainability (α = 0.793), and administrative efficiency (α = 0.751). Pearson correlations among the four constructs were all positive and statistically significant at p < 0.01, with coefficients ranging from r = 0.414 to r = 0.591, well below conventional multicollinearity concern thresholds.

The cross-national comparison produced a strikingly narrow pattern of differences. Independent-samples t-tests found a statistically significant difference only for sustainability, where South Korea (M = 3.49, SD = 0.65) scored higher than Japan (M = 3.10, SD = 0.64), t = 2.610, p = 0.011. Differences in governance (South Korea M = 3.20, Japan M = 3.12, p = 0.597), fairness (South Korea M = 3.53, Japan M = 3.58, p = 0.733), and administrative efficiency (South Korea M = 3.40, Japan M = 3.23, p = 0.296) were not statistically significant, indicating broadly comparable perceived levels across the two countries except for sustainability.

Hypothesis testing revealed selective, domain-specific associations rather than uniformly positive interdependencies among the four principles. In the first regression model, administrative efficiency was regressed on sustainability, fairness, and governance. The overall model was statistically significant (R2 = 0.304; adjusted R2 = 0.275; F = 10.491), with acceptable residual independence (Durbin–Watson = 1.702) and low multicollinearity (VIFs approximately 1.48–1.80). Among the predictors, only fairness was significantly and positively associated with administrative efficiency (B = 0.413; β = 0.351; t = 2.933; p = 0.005); the sustainability and governance relationships were not supported. In the second model, sustainability was regressed on governance, fairness, and administrative efficiency. This model was also statistically significant (R2 = 0.398; adjusted R2 = 0.373; F = 15.874), and governance showed a significant positive association with sustainability (B = 0.519; β = 0.449; t = 4.047; p < 0.001), while fairness (p = 0.278) and administrative efficiency (p = 0.110) were not statistically significant predictors.

Mediation hypotheses fared less well. Bootstrapped indirect effects (5,000 resamples, 95% confidence intervals) showed that for the first mediation hypothesis the total effect of fairness on administrative efficiency was significant (Effect = 0.589; 95% CI [0.353, 0.825]) and the direct effect remained significant (Effect = 0.456; 95% CI [0.197, 0.715]), but the indirect effect through sustainability was not significant because the confidence interval included zero (Effect = 0.133; 95% CI [−0.027, 0.370]). For the second mediation hypothesis, the total effect of governance on sustainability was significant (Effect = 0.683; 95% CI [0.467, 0.899]) and the direct effect remained significant (Effect = 0.560; 95% CI [0.306, 0.814]), whereas the indirect effect through fairness was not significant (Effect = 0.123; 95% CI [−0.015, 0.349]). In both cases, the hypothesized indirect pathways were statistically unsupported.

Item-level descriptive findings added texture to these results. Japanese respondents rated consistency of project implementation and post-project management relatively higher, whereas Korean respondents rated continuity of assignment, community collaboration, and post-project evaluation relatively higher. For governance, overall perceptions were positive, with Korea tending to report higher evaluations on collecting citizen input and stakeholder participation, while Japanese respondents in their 50s tended to evaluate governance more negatively. For fairness, the fairness of competition and contest processes was evaluated as low in both countries, while transparency in commissioning and advance disclosure of design review criteria were evaluated more favorably. For administrative efficiency, Japan tended to rate interdepartmental collaboration, design–construction linkage, and appropriateness of maintenance management higher, whereas Korea tended to rate administrative speed and timeliness higher.

The authors draw a dual-leverage conclusion: procedural legitimacy and credibility, captured by fairness, appear to be the most immediate correlate of operational performance, while participatory coordination and institutional collaboration, captured by governance, appear to be the primary correlate of long-term continuity. They caution, however, that the evidence rests on a limited sample size (N = 76) drawn from a structurally constrained population of specialized officials—often only one or two per local municipality—limiting generalizability. The study also relies on single-source, self-reported perceptions, used exploratory rather than confirmatory factor analysis because the restricted official pool made the larger samples required for structural equation modeling impractical, and its cross-sectional, regression-based design limits causal interpretation. Policy implications proposed by the team include lifecycle-based policy management, strengthened participation mechanisms at the planning stage, standardized and transparent review and procurement procedures, and organizational strategies to mitigate discontinuity stemming from frequent staff rotation.

Subject of Research: An empirical study of sustainability, governance, fairness, and administrative efficiency in urban design administration, comparing survey responses from public officials in South Korea and Japan.

Article Title: A Sustainable Operations and Management System for Urban Design Administration: Comparative Evidence from South Korea and Japan

Article References: Lee, S., Kubota, Y., & Ahn, C. (2026). A Sustainable Operations and Management System for Urban Design Administration: Comparative Evidence from South Korea and Japan. Architectural Research, 28(1), Article 29. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44515-026-00032-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44515-026-00032-y

Keywords: urban design administration, South Korea, Japan, policy sustainability, governance, procedural fairness, administrative efficiency, public officials survey, machizukuri, cross-national comparison, regression analysis, local government