The importance of carbon neutrality in global issues is becoming more significant and for the case of Korea, interest in balanced national development and mega cities has been sparked by the imbalance caused by population concentration in the metropolitan area and the extinction of provincial towns caused by population decline. The purpose of this study is to present green balanced development strategy for the carbon neutrality era as a new balanced development paradigm and prepare a transition direction for the establishment of carbon neutral mega cities. To this end, this study reviews overseas cases and balanced development to present a green balanced development paradigm. The direction of transition in the spatial structure, industry, energy, and transportation sectors is also derived to promote carbon-neutral mega cities.
In the establishment of mega cities, it is necessary to initially establish an integrated institution and authority system for the building of sustainable mega cities. Also the value of carbon neutrality should be reflected in regional plans, and a shift to a sector-specific carbon neutral system is necessary. The result of Korea's balanced development policy review so far implies that environmental considerations such as carbon neutrality were insufficiently regarded. Various balanced development indicators for the evaluation of the degree of balanced development in the country show serious imbalance between the metropolitan area and the non-metropolitan area, and a potential risk of a new carbon neutral gap in promoting carbon neutral policies exis