1. Introduction
In some of the historical cities of the world, fortresses form boundaries of city areas. Fortresses composed the urban infrastructure with urban expansion. Most of these areas belong to old downtowns used to be recognized as areas that inhibited the urban landscape. However, they are currently reconsidered as important elements of the historical landscape. Although restoration movements for historical cities have lately become more abundant, focusing on the historical value of such areas, it is still far from being ready to restore a prototype because the transition of urban structures has not been well enough understood and a rather passive attitude has been taken by paying attention to only seemingly “worthy” elements, ignoring the essential value of historical landscapes.
Recent history shows that interests in historical environments have extended to the historical landscapes that ultimately include all elements containing a visible historical significance [
1]. In the past, a historical continuity was often disregarded for modernization in Asia. Most nations were eager to adopt Western style, while their traditional cultures have been neglected. The primary reason behind the destruction of large buildings can be explained quite simply: the cultural, symbolic and economic values were not as significant as the region’s urgency to adopt a new lifestyle, new structure, and utilize new materials for construction as well as earn a considerably large speculative profit [
2].
However, preserving the cultural assets within the historical landscapes has depended only on preserving the original form, with no concern for the social situation. Cultural assets place special significance on scarcity regarding its achieved historical or academic value, while the historical landscape can include extensive regions beyond the range of single objects, which could emphasize the overall image and can comprehensively include both sociological and natural factors.
Especially Korea’s cultural assets require preservation of the entire cultural asset area, more so than other countries, because building arrangement and space composition is designed to merge with the natural environment [
3]. Recently, focus has shifted away from solely preserving the individual cultural assets, as this is a notably narrow sense of preservation. There are rising efforts to preserve not only the individual cultural assets, but also the overall surrounding areas [
4]. However, the extent of targeted objects for preservation, which include the surrounding area, only includes a limited scope and does not diverge from the narrow viewpoint of only focusing on the individual cultural asset. There is a struggle with the ability to change the scope of perception for what is necessary in regards to historical preservation.
Now, as a matter of history, in terms of preserving the principal value of an object, which can be affected by other factors, it is important to consider not only direct impact of the object itself, but also various external factors. Preservation of the main value of a particular object is not obtained by solely focusing on direct factors and effects, but by also considering those factors which are indirect factors. For example, In the case of the Unified Silla (BC 57-AD 935) Capital, restoration has been underway by the district unit for 20 years; however, even the restoration of the basic structures has yet to be completed.
Urban environment traces the history of past events, prior occupations and possession [
5]. A multilateral effort is necessary, which includes tracing the changes of growth and development through history as well as factoring changes in society, both at the local and national level.
In this respect, the present study assumes an empirical research. This study chose a past city as an object of research, out of those that were formerly built in fortress structure and still preserve historically and culturally important elements, to understand how such a city, of historical value and importance, changed during urbanization and what factors were utilized in the process. The findings from this effort are expected to be used to restore and sustain the authenticity of historical landscapes. Particularly, studying the landscape for historical value and connecting phenomenon with an area, defining the regional development stage and development gap and also understanding developmental trends should be the preconditions for landscape restoration.
The elements of the city were physical boundary formed by a fortress. A fortress during the medieval period was the basic structure in determining the location, function and size of a city or a walled town. The arrangement of major functions inside each fortress is similar to that of a medieval fortress. Furthermore, the patterns of urban organization, which are created due to the collapse of a fortress in a developing city, are also similar to that in the medieval period [
6].
This is the same case in Namwon City. Only part of the physical Namwoneupseong Walled Town remains as of today, which allows one to only assume its original form. Currently, Gwanghalluwon Garden is the most representative historical landscape in Namwon city. The paradigm of historical landscape was transferred to Gwanghallu Won Garden as a “dominated landscape”.
Within Gwanghalluwon Garden was the first pavilion (a high upper chamber) located in a vast granary in the Jeolla-Do Province. Built by Prime Minister Hwang-Hui, who was highly respected by the public, Gwanghalluwon Garden is an important landmark, in which master of lyric literature and provincial governor Jeong-Cheol embodied a cosmic symbolism utilizing Ojakgyo Bridge and Three Mysterious Groups of Islands.
Lately, the world is paying keen attention to the values of historical landscapes, which are utilized in order to form more cultural and creative cities, seeking to highlight their history and formulate their identity through studying the cases of European preservative endeavors on historical cities. Sasaki Masayuki (2004) mentioned Bologna (Italy), Kanazawa (Japan), Birmingham (UK), and Freiburg (Germany) as success cases of transforming “Doughnut Phenomenon”, though acknowledging the contribution of industrialization to rapid urbanization, by post-industrialism into cultural production cities through “the convergence of culture and economy” [
7]. As M.R.G. Conzen’s urban morphology was introduced in Korea in the 1990s, his theory and methodology applied the domestic studies regarding land structure in a city. The primary focus of the studies was to track the transition of land patterns through examining urban tissue and transitional processes. Lee (1992) analyzed the spatial change of land by tracking the change of plot system [
8]; Yang (1994) analyzed the characteristics of plot patterns and structure [
9]. This approach of urban morphology method is useful in analyzing land patterns, especially more applicable to the historical cities of Korea.
Upon these theoretical backgrounds, the present study selected Namwon City, which is a historical city long representing the Jiri mountain area in Korea and which is built in a walled town, as a research object. The study aimed to track down the transitional process in which the hierarchical dominance in the urban structure of Namwon City shifted from Namwoneupseong Walled Town to the area of Gwanghalluwon Garden with help of cadastral data and various historical sources and factors regarding the transition. It also attempted to find a plan to develop sustainable historical landscape on the basis of its findings. As a result, this study finds its academic significance and relevance in the fact that it is an actual case study that can play a critical role in preserving and restoring the authenticity and integrity of a historical city.
2. Research Method
To demonstrate how the original landscape of Namwoneupseong Walled Town and Gwanghalluwon Garden has changed, and which factors have played a part in the transitional process, this study used macroscopic and microscopic approaches in conjunction: comparison with historical materials and cadastral maps. For the historical sources, this study examined Sam-Guk-Sa-Gi (1145, The Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms), Dong-Kuk-Yeo-Ji-Seung-Lam (1481), Ji-Sung map (1677), Hae-Dong-Ji-Do map (1750) as well as various county maps. Cadastral maps were used as cadastral data to track the transition pattern by period and ancient maps were used to define the original landscape before the existence of cadastral data. Both macroscopic and microscopic approaches were taken in carrying out analysis with cadastral maps. Looking into Namwon City and Namwoneupseong Walled Town, the macroscopic approach analyzed their geomorphological characteristics, such as route system, fixation line, central district and plane unit and urban plane composition, to understand the factors in the transitional process. In the meantime, the microscopic approach tracked down the details of the changes in the lots through the land registries and cadastral data of the whole Gwanghalluwon Garden area.
After tracking the transitional process and finding the political, economic and social preservation factors of Namwon City, this study analyzed the characteristics of Namwoneupseong Walled Town and Gwanghalluwon Garden (
Figure 1), which is the dominated landscape of the Namwon region, and proposed a regional development plan for sustaining Namwoneupseong Walled Town by applied the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach launched by UNESCO.
The present study took urban morphology and added to it microscopic methodology, which analyzes cadastral data such as lot change to better understand the detailed transition process of the historical landscape.
Figure 1.
Location of the study area.
Figure 1.
Location of the study area.
3. Results and Discussion
3.3. Preservation Factors of Gwanghalluwon Garden: The Sustainability of Gwanghalluwon Garden
The factors that contributed to the conservation of Gwanghalluwon Garden as the “Dominated landscape” can be divided into external and internal factors. And, each factor has mutually related sub-factors in historic, cultural, and geographic aspects.
External factors contributing to Gwanghalluwon Garden’s preservation can be found in the fact that, as the area surrounding Gwanghalluwon Garden had been developed to a full extent, in the initial stage of urbanization of Namwon city, the central district had to move to outer areas, excluding the area surrounding Gwanghalluwon Garden from rapid changes of external landscape and pressures of further development (
Figure 4).
During the Japanese colonial Period (1910–1945), as the walled town system with walls as its borders collapsed, Namwon city started to be urbanized. In 1913, as modern streets began to be built on the spaces where old city walls had been removed, the central districts moved out from the area inside the walls to Gwanghalluwon Garden. And, as railroad was constructed in the 1930s, the fixation line of Namwon city was restricted to the south of the railroad. Accordingly, before the urbanization of the 1980s started, the development of Gwanghalluwon Garden area had already become saturated, forcing the city government to choose conurbation, or expanding the urban development to the outskirts of the city. Then, as the expressway passing near the city was constructed in 1995, and the city hall and other core facilities moved to the newly developed area, Gwanghalluwon Garden area faced a doughnut phenomenon.
Figure 4.
Process of External Preservation in Gwanghalluwon Garden. This figure was applied the methodology of the Nakamura Kazuo [
16].
Figure 4.
Process of External Preservation in Gwanghalluwon Garden. This figure was applied the methodology of the Nakamura Kazuo [
16].
On the other hand, there have been some internal factors for the conservation of Gwanghalluwon Garden: use of it as administrative building (historical aspect), expansion of the area of Gwanghalluwon Garden (geographic aspect), and the popularity of the novel Chunhyang-jeon (cultural aspect). Gwanghalluwon Garden was built in 1434 as a pavilion, auxiliary to the city hall. During the Japanese Occupation Era, parts of Gwanghalluwon Garden and a considerable number of historic and cultural artifacts within it were damaged. But, it was used for administrative facilities such as the judicial court of Namwon city and a prison run by military police. In the modernization period, the pavilion was also used as temporary office buildings. That is the reason why Gwanghalluwon Garden could survive amid the changes of urban structures accompanying urban development of the city in the 1960s.
And, as the area surrounding Gwanghalluwon Garden-which is near Gurae and Sunchang cities to the south of it-has long been a transportation hub, it was developed as a commercial area after the Japanese Invasions of Joseon Dynasty (1592–1598). But, the big fire which occurred in Namwon Market in 1970 caused the area to lose its function as a commercial hub. Then, the Namwon municipal government procured large areas of land around Gwanghalluwon Garden, which added that land to Gwanghalluwon Garden’s total area. In 1974, the municipal government renovated Gwanghalluwon Garden itself to develop it as a tourist attraction. As the area of Gwanghalluwon Garden was expanded, a buffer zone between the Gwanghalluwon Garden space and the development area was formed. The revenue from the tourist area of Gwanghalluwon Garden contributed to the finances of the city government, so Gwanghalluwon Garden could be free from conflicts between development and conservation, forces frequently faced by the historical landscapes.
In addition, the popularity of the novel Chunhyang-jeon can be cited as a cultural factor contributing to the conservation of Gwanghalluwon Garden. In 1582, during the Joseon Dynasty, Gwanghalluwon Garden was equipped with Three Mysterious Groups of Islands, which symbolized the world of legendary hermits, and a pond. It became known as a beautiful site within the Joseon Dynasty. Chunhyang-jeon is a representative novel of the Joseon period and its stories are unfolded against the background of the beautiful landscape of Gwanghalluwon Garden. The romance and the main theme of the novel (that good ultimately triumphs over evil) was very popular among the people, making Gwanghalluwon Garden a popular place. Then, in 1931, Namwon Gwonbeon was established, and, in 1970, the National Gukak Center (Korean Classical Music Institute) was established in Gwanghalluwon Garden. Gwanghalluwon Garden was used as the stage for the Pansori (a Korean genre of musical storytelling) play, Chunhyang-ga. The ceremony to remember “Chunhyang”, which started in 1931, developed into a local festival with various themes and resources for tourists.
The secret of how Gwanghalluwon Garden has been able to survive as a “Dominated landscape” is likely to be found in the relationship between the development of the city (external factor), historical landscapes (internal factor), and complex interactions of history, geography, and culture,
etc. And, each factor has served as a unique element in developing Gwanghalluwon Garden into a famous site. Now, people perceive the area surrounding Gwanghalluwon Garden as a valuable space (
Figure 5).
Figure 5.
Maintenance factors of Gwanghalluwon Garden.
Figure 5.
Maintenance factors of Gwanghalluwon Garden.
3.4. Sustainability of the Area Surrounding Gwanghalluwon Garden
The sustainability that Gwanghalluwon Gardens has lies in the fact that it is a place where culture has accumulated over a long time, however it is threatened by urban development. To preserve Gwanghalluwon Garden’s important legacy as a historical landscape, it is necessary to shed new light on the awareness of values accumulated over time. Value awareness can be evaluated differently over time, and it has unpredictable variety. But, the awareness of respecting value and tradition of cultural spaces and natural environments has not diminished despite the long stream of time. Accordingly, the process by which a historical resource evolves in value, urban functions, and culture can be expected to have “unpredictable positive effects” where cultural acts occurring in areas like society, environment, and economics, etc. serve as motives to preserve the historical resource.
The UNESCO Recommendation promotes the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach as a new way to include various aspects of conservation in an integrated framework, such as how cultural diversity affects values and approaches to conservation; the awareness of the link between natural and cultural factors in the conservation of the built environment; the new challenges brought about by rapid social and economic changes; and the need to ensure a sustainable future for heritage conservation. The HUL approach is not designed to replace existing doctrines or conservation approaches, but rather is envisaged as a tool to integrate policies and practices of conservation of the built environment by defining operational principles able to ensure urban conservation models that respect the values, traditions and environments of different cultural contexts, as well as to help redefine urban heritage as the centre of the spatial development process [
17].
Steps to embody the approach for a historical city landscape are applied to the target places of this study as follows.
3.4.1. To Reach Consensus Using Participatory Planning and Stakeholder Consultations on What Values to Protect for Transmission to Future Generations and to Determine the Attributes that Carry these Values
When we consider its internal sustainability, we cannot ignore the effect of cultural tools, such as novels, traditional music called Pansori, and the garden surrounding the structure, which have functioned as internal borders. Furthermore, the construction of a natural environment of a fortress within the Garden made in accordance with feng-shui (the theory of divination based on topography) serves as a crucial element for the survival of Gwanghalluwon Garden. The retention of walled town as streets are part of the mass culture, which comprise Gwanghallu Pavilion, garden spaces, and the novel Chunhyang-jeon. Now, such places are used as leisure life spaces, and places where local festivals are held. The usage of these places for leisure and festival activities is the result of both current and past generations understanding their historic value as cultural properties. The recent trend of tourists preferring to enjoy traditional culture has contributed to an increase in visits to Gwanghalluwon Garden. The emergence of a link between a place which was part of Namwon city and that place being seen as a place for tourism serves as its external element. But, they can be contentious elements because there are conflicts of interests among various groups of people such as Namwon citizens and residents living near the old urban center, merchants in tourist districts, and tourists. Suitable compromises made between the leisure demands of Namwon citizens, demands of tourists, and demands of merchants in tourist districts should be the first priority in order to prevent them from tarnishing the essential value of Gwanghalluwon Garden.
3.4.2. To Integrate Urban Heritage Values and Their Vulnerability Status into a Wider Framework of City Development, which Shall Provide Indications of Areas of Heritage Sensitivity that Require Careful Attention to Planning, Design and Implementation of Development Projects
If we apply such phenomena to the area surrounding Gwanghalluwon Garden, it is to draw elements of perceiving values from external and internal aspects, and link them to other historical resources nearby in social, environmental, and cultural aspects. Through this process, we can recover the original form of Gwanghalluwon Garden.
From a social aspect, Namwon city’s Gwanghalluwon Garden still maintains some physical characteristics of street structure and a plane unit that was established in the period of the Three States. This means that the city still has a structural foundation for recovering the prototypes of the past. When value awareness for urban functions and culture enjoyment overlap, a high probability for sustainable development is possible.
Environmental aspects are divided into urban infrastructure, natural environment, and elements related with landmarks. The infrastructure before the demolition of the city walls is the element forming the image of the whole Namwon, and it is the object considered to be essential for recovering its original features. Its main structures have two fortresses, Namwoneupseong Walled Town and Gyoryongsanseong Fortress; Namwonhyanggyo Local Confucian School; and Gwanghalluwon Garden, entertainment facility that have remained until now. And, past landmarks―Seonwonsa temple (east), Gwanwangmyo shrine, Namwon (west), Gwanghalluwon Garden (south), and Gyoryongsanseong fortress (north)––are major elements which determine the four directions from the center of Namwon city, and can serve as standards determining the borders of the fortress.
Sustainability in cultural aspects has an overlapping relationship between cultural phenomenon perceived as an important element in the past and cultural value perception, which occurs nowadays. The past efforts to apply feng-shui (the theory of divination based on topography) and World of the Taoist concepts to geographic systems of the city were considered to be important values, serving as the momentum for historical resources to be able to survive up to now. The characteristics related with such concepts can be identified in the garden of Gwanghalluwon Garden, Seungwolgyo Bridge, and Seungwoldae Rock, and Gwanwangmyo Shrine, Namwon. Meanwhile, historical resources working as backgrounds for popular novels in the past such as Chunhyang-jeon (Gwanghalluwon Garden), Manboksa Jeopogi (Manboksa Temple site), and Hongdojeon (Tomb of Ten Thousand Patriotic Martyrs) are used as tourism themes related with story-telling, proving that historical resources have been preserved by changing them into sources of tourism.
3.4.3. To Prioritize Policies and Actions for Conservation and Development
Policies to preserve the area surrounding Gwanghalluwon Garden need to define the site based on values of the new age in order to secure its absolute value when such policies compete with other kinds of policies. In order to do that, proper value education, training, and perception, which can affect value decisions, caused by perception and culture formation on political, economic, and social importance should be secured. It is necessary to develop such cultural contents.
3.4.4. To Establish the Appropriate Partnerships and Local Management Frameworks for Each of the Identified Projects for Conservation and Development, as Well as to Develop Mechanisms for the Coordination of the Various Activities between Different Actors, both Public and Private
The examination of the awareness of value as a HUL mentioned above and a wider historical resources should be linked by fusing various awareness models as values evolve. To preserve Gwanghalluwon Garden’s sustainably, it is necessary to overlap values by linking values appearing per type in order to transcend social, economic, and political limits. Guided by the items suggested in the advice related with the “HUL” approach launched by UNESCO, joint examination of these issues by the committee consisting of the members of related agencies in the urban development project is necessary to reach an agreement on conservation of historic urban landscape considering its relationship with the project which is completes year by year. Therefore, national and local governments need to set up micro- and macro-goals and middle- and long-term goals for every stage of the urban development project, and long-term goals for recovering the original forms of historic urban landscape and activating it.
As seen in
Figure 6, setting up of districts through linkage of different types of historical resources revealed that the area where values in various aspects overlapped the most is the district between the south and west border of the Namwon Eupseong walled town and Gwanghalluwon Garden. It is a residential area now suffering from Doughnut phenomenon. The district can be expected to serve as a buffer zone contributing to a recovery of the relationship between Namwon Eupseong walled town and Gwanghalluwon Garden. Through cultivating this area, the process of recovering sites where values are overlapped should be expanded.
Figure 6.
Restoration network of Namwon walled town.
Figure 6.
Restoration network of Namwon walled town.
4. Conclusions
With Namwon City and Gwanghalluwon Garden as research objects, the present study examined the transitional process, in which the hierarchical dominance in the urban structure of Namwon City shifted from Namwon walled town to the area of Gwanghalluwon Garden, and its factors. The findings are as follows.
First, macroscopic analysis was conducted on the urban structure of Namwon City upon route system, urban pattern structure and urban pattern plane. The urban structure of past Namwon City had succeeded to the street structure of then-walled town. However, as through traffic developed in the urban, modified grid street structure coexisted with typical grid street structure in the land and the towns of the urban. In addition, as the fortress was demolished, limiting line to land development expanded east and west along the railroad and Yochun River. However, attention has returned to the activation of old downtown due to the saturation of development and urban hollowing out. The direction of new attention naturally steered to Gwanghalluwon Garden located in the old downtown.
Second, the microscope analysis was carried out on the whole area of Gwanghalluwon Garden. The changes in the lots in the cadastral map data showed that the garden, which was originally a government office pavilion, started to possess the characteristics of a tourist attraction with Chunhyang as its theme. It was transformed into the current figure of Gwanghalluwon Garden through the regional expansion project in the 1960s, relocation due to the fire accident in the neighboring market in the 1970s and a large-scaled land purchase of Namwon County. Later, Gwanghalluwon Garden was designated as a cultural asset and the current shape of Gwanghalluwon Garden has been preserved since then.
Third, external factor contributing to Gwanghalluwon Garden’s preservation can be found in the fact that, as the area surrounding Gwanghalluwon Garden had been developed to a full extent, in the initial stage of urbanization of Namwon city, excluding the area surrounding Gwanghalluwon Garden from rapid changes of external landscape and pressures of further development. On the other hand, there have been some internal factors for the conservation of Gwanghalluwon Garden: use of it as administrative building (historical aspect), expansion of the area of Gwanghalluwon Garden (geographic aspect), and the popularity of the novel Chunhyang-jeon (cultural aspect).
Fourth, to preserve Gwanghalluwon Garden’s important legacy as a historical landscape, it is necessary to shed new light on the awareness of values accumulated over time. Accordingly, the process by which a historical resource evolves in value, urban functions, and culture can be expected to have “unpredictable positive effects” where cultural acts occurring in areas like society, environment, and economics, etc. serve as motives to preserve the historical resource.
In the past, a historical continuity was often disregarded for modernization in eastern society. And preserving the cultural assets within the historical landscapes has depended only on preserving the original form with no concern for the social situation. However, now, as a matter of history, in terms of preserving the principal value of an object, which can be affected by other factors, it is important to consider not only direct impact of the object itself, but also various external factors. Preservation of the main value of a particular object is not obtained by solely focusing on direct factors and effects but by also considering those factors which are indirect. A multilateral effort is necessary, which includes tracing the changes of growth and development through history, as well as factoring changes in society, both at the local and national level.