In the 2030 Seoul Plan, the Seoul Metropolitan Government has released urban spatial structure with 3 global centers, 7 metropolitan centers, and 12 regional centers in 2014. Through this, it is designed to improve quality-of-life, to mitigate regional imbalance, and to deal with further metropolitanization in the Seoul Metropolitan Area.

The present study aims to define the roles and functions of metropolitan centers, to provide with the policies and strategies for promoting the centers to do the roles for their respective metropolitan sub-regions. Thus, we ask a few important questions on which roles and functions the normal metropolitan centers have and which policy directions and strategies must have for managing and promoting the centers.

This research suggests, at first, that the policy directions of promoting and managing the metropolitan centers should be set up, considering the situations of the low-growth era. Secondly, policy means must be appropriate to improve urban centrality and metropolitanization. Thirdly, potential metropolitan centers such as Sadang․Isu and Mangwoo regional centers are recommended to be included into metropolitan centers.