A review of the literature on the subject of public housing for artists shows that the concept of artists' housing has not yet been mentioned in the context of public housing or in terms of the direction of the research, which mostly focuses on the economic value of the art housing itself and the gentrification of the city, as well as an analysis of its economic value in relation to the cultural industry (Table 1). First, from the point of view of the economic value of art housing, the main conclusions are in two directions. The first affirms the positive role of art housing in regional development. In 2010, Strom Elisabeth confirmed the importance of artists' housing through interviews and secondary sources, arguing that, in most cities, artists' housing programs are seen as part of an economic development agenda with a transformative effect (Strom, 2010). In 2012, author Zebracki further supported the economic value of artists' housing for regional development through a case study while demonstrating that artists have a guiding role in the policy development of housing corporations (Zebracki and Smulders, 2012). The second argues that art housing slows economic development while driving regional structural change. 2016 author Sheng Zhong shows that artists may fall victim to real estate development in the face of an economic push, resulting in a diminution of value within the group, as well as 2022 researcher Shiro Horiuchi's study of the central Japanese city's Baika-Shikanjima neighborhood in downtown Japan, further suggesting that gentrification can be avoided if artists participate in community life based on art housing, but at the same time, it can slow down the economic development of the area (Shkuda, 2015; Horiuchi, 2022). The limitations of existing research are in three main directions: first, concerns about the gentrification of urban spaces, where Shkuda's study of the history of luxury apartments in SoHo, New York, confirms the role of art as a catalyst for urban development and community renewal but also shows that the model is limited by the possibility of repeatedly trapping urban areas in a cycle of gentrification; and, in the context of a collaborative structure of government policy support and civil society organizations, the role of art as a catalyst for urban development and community regeneration. Under the collaborative structure of government policy support and civil society organizations, the lack of government policies to support artists' housing, such as housing subsidies and the lack of cultural services and facilities, has caused the group to fall victim to real estate development, thereby weakening the cultural values within the group.

When reviewing previous public housing-related policy studies in Korea, the analysis revealed that although the supply of public housing for Korean artists started in 2014, it has been mentioned in the literature but not explicitly studied as a separate topic. The reason is that most previous studies of public housing systems in Korea have been based on cases in Europe and the United States (Ahn et al., 2010; Lee et al., 2011; Chun, 2019; Nam, 2019; Min and Choi, 2020), which has led to much criticism of the vague division of supply types and the decrease in supply efficiency in Korea (Shin et al., 2017; Kim and Jeong, 2018; Lee et al., 2019; Yunyung, 2020). In this context, artists' housing is analyzed as a type of community housing due to the vagueness of the definition. In terms of research findings, the customized public housing system was introduced by the national government in 2014 to solve the phased housing problem. However, previous studies on public housing in Korea have ignored the developmental combination of this supply model and the summary of the uniqueness of existing housing policies, focusing mostly on the reorganization of the policy system and the construction of a new supply model (Jeon and Min, 2011; Seung, 2019; Kang and Seo, 2021; Lee and Kim, 2021; Woo and Koo, 2021; Hee et al., 2022; Jang et al., 2022; Kim, 2022; Park and Choi, 2022). Therefore, it is necessary to reorganize and summarize the meaning of the Korean artists' public housing model before studying it.

However, previous studies on public housing in Korea have ignored the developmental combination of this supply model and the summary of the uniqueness of existing housing policies, focusing mostly on the reorganization of the policy system and the construction of a new supply model (Jeon and Min, 2011; Seung, 2019; Kang and Seo, 2021; Lee and Kim, 2021; Hee et al., 2022; Jang et al., 2022; Kim, 2022; Park and Choi, 2022).

In summary, the support and subsidization of artists' housing (space) is increasingly seen as a major policy tool for regional economic development. Although its positive effects have been affirmed and case studies and policy analyses have been carried out in a number of places, there is still no clear solution to the problem of how to balance the balance between the group and the region and how to deal with the problems of regional economic development and the gentrification crisis. Further analysis and comparative studies are needed. Further analysis and comparative research are needed.

In previous overseas cases, artists' housing has been planned, implemented, and managed by nonprofit organizations as a means to promote regional economic development and as a model of housing provision for minority groups. One of the more well-developed and representative artists' housing organizations is Artspace in the United States. It provides affordable and sustainable spaces for artists and arts organizations through the renovation of old spaces, reuse of historic buildings, and new construction, and works with state governments to provide housing security for artists. In 2000, the Paducah government proposed the Artist Relocation Program to improve the image of the town and revitalize the community, providing artists with financial and creative space support. Although proposed by the government, the housing was supplied by Artspace. In a subsequent development, Artspace gradually established partnerships with state governments, communities, and public interest organizations, thus promoting a new model of artists' housing development and the development of various working facilities. The company now serves multidisciplinary groups, such as performance, culinary, and visual artists. The basic facilities have been expanded from the original living and working spaces to include an exhibition space, an education center, an administrative space, and even an outdoor reception and performance plaza.

Attitudes toward and responses to artists' residences in Asian countries show distinct differences. In China, since 2009, to promote the modernization of cities, large-scale renovation and demolition of areas where artists gather have begun, the most controversial of which was the demolition of the “Huan Ti Art Zone” and the “Rome Lake Art Zone” in 2017. The two large-scale art parks were relocated after the demolition of Songzhuang in 2013. This demolition was different from previous ones, as the artists in the park made a joint petition to try to resist the government's forced demolition. However, this effort was ultimately unsuccessful, and the artists were eventually forced to move again after only 4 years of residency (Currier, 2008; Art Zone demolition, 2010). With this focus on economic benefits and the eviction of art groups, it is not possible to advocate housing security for artists. The present-day preserved art parks, represented by the 798 Art Zone (Xuefei and Meng, 2012), are cultural landmarks in Beijing and have not been plagued by demolition, but the loss of art groups is becoming increasingly serious due to the transitional commercialization and upscaling of these spaces (Demolition of the Huan Ti Art Zone, 2012). In Japan, projects related to art housing have mostly been launched as part of cultural tourism with the aim of regional revitalization and entrepreneurial industrial development combining art and community. In 1998, the Art House Project, which was organized by artist groups, originated when most of the young people of Naoshima, Japan, left to make a living. Some elderly people donated their old houses and moved to more accessible places, and artists from all over the world transformed the abandoned houses into individual art installations. The innovative combination of history with individual artistic styles turned these spaces into works of art themselves. The community has been successfully promoted through art and is now operating as a visitor attraction. Although it is not associated with housing or public housing to date, the operational model has brought positive interaction between urban and rural, young and old, residents and visitors, and has effectively contributed to regional economic development. The Singapore Arts Housing Scheme was started in 1985 by the National Arts Council to support local artists and arts activities (Chien, 1995; Arts Infrastructure Schemes, 2010). Subsequently, as urbanization accelerated and land in Singapore became scarce and costly, the program began in 2010 to provide liveable rental spaces for artists while bringing the arts to the surrounding communities. In 2019, support for artists was further expanded with the introduction of the Arts Support Framework (ASF). The framework nurtures the local arts and cultural ecosystem by addressing the need for affordable administrative space and suitable exhibition venues (Su, 2020).

In summary, art has been widely used as one of the strategies to promote regional economic development and urban renewal. The common denominator of these cases is that they are organized and promoted by nonprofit organizations in order to support regional economies, taking into account specific development needs. Although they have different developmental priorities and practices, they all confirm the positive role of art in promoting urban and community development. Korea's early years were similar to Japan's in that it used the arts as a primary means of regional cultural revitalization. The difference, however, is that with the success of the art projects, the Korean government did not continue to expand the project scale but rather shifted the focus to the art community itself and then to regional revitalization and creative support premised on livelihood security. The definition and development of this model are detailed in the next section.

The concept of artist housing originated from the practice of urban regeneration projects. In 1972, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism established the Public Art Promotion Committee as a support organization for previous urban art projects to improve the urban environment and revitalize urban culture by enacting the Culture and Art Promotion Act to achieve regional economic recovery (Lee and Lee, 2012). In 2006, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism established the Public Art Promotion Committee as a support organization for previous urban art projects. As the policy progressed, however, art creation in the urban context shifted to the “community.” From 2009, it was combined with urban regeneration projects to support regional art projects to alleviate the phenomenon of urban aging and economic decline. During the project promotion phase, the government realized the importance of culture and art for regional revitalization, and these issues gradually became the core driving force of urban development in Korea as “public property” (Woo, 2019).

With the success of the urban regeneration project, the government began to pay attention to the current living conditions of the art community and found that most artists faced difficulties in their artistic activities and livelihoods due to unstable income (Kim and Choi, 2019). As a result, the government enacted the Artists' Welfare Act in 2011 to protect the legal rights of the art community and to systematically provide support benefits for artists and promote their creative activities (Artist Welfare Act, 2021) by launching the first artist housing practice in 2013.

The first artist housing demonstration project was implemented by SH. The project was initially influenced by community housing and art cooperatives in Europe and the United States to create the first art community housing in Seoul (it is worth noting that at this time, arts groups were not part of the target group for public housing). The project was located around Hongdae, one of the most popular areas in Seoul, and featured a community house that could improve the quality of living culture and promote artistic exchange by recruiting residents in advance and involving them in the design of the house (Manli-dong Artist House Collection Announcement, 2013). After 2 years of preparation, the first artist residence was put into use in 2015. However, due to the high construction cost and the localization limitations of the cooperative model, the residence became the only community residence in the subsequent supply, and housing security for the art community was at a temporary deadlock. The next year, the city of Seoul formally included groups engaged in income-generating activities or artistic activities in the public housing supply group through the enactment of the Public Housing Special Act. In the same year, the city purchased vacant houses in the community as public housing and provided a uniform supply for artists.

From 2016 to 2023, artist housing was formally provided by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Housing Department as one of the categories of public housing in the city (Housing Welfare Roadmap 2.0, 2020). Artists were further subdivided by occupation according to the business structure and cultural characteristics of each area with the aim of increasing the total supply while expanding the adaptability of the security policy. In the context of the ongoing economic structural change, culture, and art, as a new economy, require flexibility, adaptability, and the ability to reorganize themselves while also relying on innovation to reorganize factors of production in a more efficient manner (Kim and Choi, 2019). Housing security is gradually evolving into comprehensive security.

In terms of the development of welfare policy support for artists, the previous support focused on strengthening creative and professional capabilities. From 2016, with the breakdown of the policy, welfare support was expanded to include multiple aspects such as housing, childcare, livelihood, mental health, and legal advice (Table 4) (Artist Welfare Act Latest Revision, 2016; Lee, 2017). As a result, housing provision for artists can be redefined as a comprehensive housing security program centered on creative activities and regional development supported by artist welfare policies and regional economic layers.

In terms of the latest policy, the LH Corporation signed a housing project with the Korea Arts Council in October 2022 for the Promotion of Artist Support Housing (59), which aims to expand the cultural atmosphere for local residents while adding a new impetus for artists to build on their stable livelihoods. Previously, the target population and pilot scope of artist housing were focused on the city of Seoul. The advancement of the new LH project represents an affirmation of the public housing project for the arts in the city of Seoul as well as a sign that customized rental housing for artists will be available nationwide.

This section chronologically summarizes the information on the type, number of households, available rental time, and supply of artists' residences in Seoul over the 10-year period from 2013 to 2023 and their distribution (see Table 5). First, in terms of the total supply trend, the supply and categories have been decreasing in the past 3 years. The types of housing supply are divided into two categories: construction and rental. The only practice of construction-type housing was the Malli-dong artist housing in 2015, which did not continue to be promoted due to factors related to preliminary construction costs and the limitations of the community model. After the government included art groups within the scope of the public housing supply population, the Jeongneung-dong artists' public housing project was officially put into use in 2016. Starting in 2017, artists' public housing went from being widely oriented toward art groups to a dramatists' house and cartoonists' house, which is provided for cartoonists, dramatists, actors, and other professional practitioners. As of 2021, the total supply of artists' public housing and its breakdown into categories decreased as the policy focus shifted to new categories of public housing. Second, from the perspective of the supply model, since the inclusion of artist housing in the public housing system in 2016, the development model of the regional management organization collocation identifying the type of residents, the supply area, the characteristics of occupancy demand, and other information in each region, and submitting it to the SH, LH, and then the government and the SH or the LH unified to provide support for affordable housing, and regional organizations to provide support for cultural activities has been in use up to the present day (Figure 1). Finally, with regard to the distribution of supply, supply has a certain direction. As a tool for urban governance and regional economic revitalization, the supply of public housing for artists is concentrated in the northern part of Seoul (i.e., the old city) and less concentrated in the eastern part of the city, where economic development is relatively good (Figure 2).

With the government's first Basic Plan for Artists' Welfare Policy (2023–2027), housing policy and arts welfare protection policy were further integrated. The concept of public housing for artists has formally evolved from the initial guarantee of housing stability to become a regional economic driver and a part of urban development strategies. As indicated by the previous summary of housing supply trends, the advantage of this allocation of housing to specific targets and specific areas through the public sector is that artists' public housing serves as a comprehensive governance approach to support the reproduction of arts and culture and efficiently reduce the problem of vacancy rates in cities by maximizing the effectiveness of housing supply through targeted zoning inputs. In terms of specific policy implementation, to systematically summarize the experience of the housing model, representative cases of the construction and rental types will be compared and analyzed from three perspectives: policy rules, infrastructure, and community participation (see Table 6).

First, from the perspective of how to acquire housing, the artist housing in Malli-dong, Jung-gu, as a representative of construction-type housing and the first public housing for artists in Korea, was acquired through the development and reuse of abandoned reservoirs in the city. The residents participated in the entire design and construction process, with a total of 29 newly built households (Artist House Recruitment, 2012). The customized Jeongneung-dong artist housing, which was first supplied in 2016 by the Seoul National Housing Corporation through the purchase of vacant housing in the city for renovation and resupply, was the first customized public housing for the arts (Jeongneung-dong Artist Public Housing, 2016), with a total of 19 units whose house types retained the original residential design.

Second, from the perspective of the housing application process, Malli-dong is a community-based development model, so the application process is more complicated and time-consuming in terms of procedures. Applicants must go through a total of four evaluation assessments (Manli-dong Artist House, 2018). The first is an objective assessment to review the materials submitted by the applicants; the second is a subjective assessment of the application volunteer letter and professional activity work; the third is a 1-year cooperative education and training for the applicants; and finally, the applicants are interviewed in each of four areas: participation integrity, will and motivation, community synergy, and development possibilities and sustainability. After the residents are identified, they meet with the person in charge of the design to respond to their housing needs and eventually live in the house they participated in designing. The Jeongneung-dong aspect is divided into two parts: data review and on-site publication. The selection method consists of a combination of objective and subjective evaluations, which requires not only verification of the occupants' income and property but also on-site interviews and, finally, the supply of housing in the order of the total score. This is the unified application process for artists' residences.

From the community side, the housing management, commercial operation, and community management of Malli-dong residents are composed of the residents living within it. From 2015 to the present, the stairwell, passageway, and exterior walls inside and outside the building have been converted and used as exhibition halls and performance halls under the joint design of the residents. The management of the residents of Jeongneung-dong is different from that of the Malli-dong Art Residence in that the community is internally occupied by a mixture of original residents and artists, and a third party is entrusted with the unified management of the community. In terms of external community participation, Malli-dong artists act as organizers of regular art exchanges, film screenings, theater, and music and provide art experience programs for local residents and public art events for the community (Figure 3) (Manlidong, 2020). The community's website also allows reservations to participate in the latest art events and keep up with developments. Jeongneung-dong Artists, on the other hand, act as participants. After its opening in 2016, events were held by the community in communication with artists, such as aromatherapy, painting, filmmaking, and leather goods (Figure 4) (Jeongneung-dong, 2017). It also promoted the artists' residences and individual artists' works by regularly holding the Jeongneung Art Village Festival with the support of the Seoul Cultural Foundation (Jeongneung-dong, 2018). The festival is included in the cultural tourism route of the area.