Search Results (5)

This study employs Hannah Arendt’s (1958) the human condition as a philosophical framework to examine walking not merely as a physical activity but as a meaningful form of environmental consciousness. Homo faber, which denotes tool making, corresponds to the nature-based railway regeneration exemplified by the Gyeongui Line Forest Park in Seoul City, South Korea. By applying walking as a method, bifurcated themes are explored: a pedestrian-provision focus on walkability and an environmentally oriented focus consisting of nature and culture, supporting the notion that environmental elements are co-experienced through the embodied activity of walking. Thematic findings are supported by generalized additive models, grounded in a between-method triangulation attempt. The results confirm the interdependencies among the park’s environment, pedestrian satisfaction, and environmental consciousness. Specifically, the environment surrounding the park, which traverses natural and cultural elements, is strongly associated with both pedestrian satisfaction and environmental sensitivity. The research reifies walking as a fundamental human condition, encompassing labor, work, and action, while arguing for heuristic reciprocity between homo faber and nature, as well as framing walking as a sustainably meaningful urban intervention. This study contributes to maturing the theoretical understanding of walking as a vital human condition and suggests practical insights for pedestrian-centered spatial transformation. Full article

Although big data has emerged as a crucial data source in urban studies, urban park-related studies still rarely use data such as that from card transactions. This study fills the gap between big data and park studies by using card transaction data within 400 m of the Gyeongui Line Forest Park in terms of economic benefits on local business. The authors divided the linear park into five sections according to each section’s design strategy to examine the relationship between the design features and card transaction behaviors. With the data, the authors analyzed the average ages of card users to understand average users’ age in each section. Results show the average ages increased from 2015 to 2017 in Sections 3–5 by years. Sections 1 and 2 describe decreasing of user ages by year, which means young generations visited Sections 1 and 2 For Section 1, amounts of average card transaction also increased from 2015 to 2017 continuously. Compared to other sections, only Section 1, as an open space within a commercialized area, contributed to local business positively. Other sections, such as 2–5, represented the negative impacts on local business from 2016 to 2017. Full article

Commercial gentrification has had a significant impact on the urban environment, particularly in leading to the upscaling and expansion of food and beverage (F&B) commercial activities. F&B commercialization and proliferation has emerged from (a) the borders of newly provided urban open space and (b) seed points where small-sized commercial areas had already been formed. However, few studies have simultaneously explored the commercialization process of these different contextual sub-regions over a relatively long time period. This study of Yeon-nam district, Seoul, aims to demonstrate empirically (1) how the F&B commercial stores have been distributed over the past decade and (2) which of the factors that are the spreading center of the F&B store is the critical factor. Using kernel density estimation, the study discovered that the old–residential district has been entirely transformed to an F&B commercial district since the Gyeong-ui Line Forest Park opened in the district. Furthermore, through the analysis of standard deviational ellipses, we empirically verified that F&B commercialization was more substantial in the seed region. Based on the findings, policy recommendations for urban planning and design, especially urban gentrification management and regeneration, are provided. Full article

To meet the needs of park users, planners and designers must know what park users want to do and how they want the park to offer different activities. Big data may help planners and designers gain this knowledge. This study examines how big data collected in an urban park could be used to identify meaningful implications for planning and design. While big data have emerged as a new data source, big data have not become an accepted source of data due to a lack of understanding of big data analytics. By comparing a survey as a traditional data source with big data, this study identifies the strengths and weaknesses of using big data analytics in park planning and design. There are two research questions: (1) what activities do park users want; and (2) how satisfied are users with different activities. The Gyeongui Line Forest Park, which was built on an abandoned railway, was selected as the study site. A total of 177 responses were collected through the onsite survey, and 3703 tweets mentioning the park were collected from Twitter. Results from the survey show that ordinary activities such as walking and taking a rest in the park were the most common. These findings also support existing studies. The results from social media analytics found notable things such as positive tweets about how the railway was turned into a park, and negative tweets about diseases that may occur in the park. Therefore, a survey as traditional data and social media analytics as big data can be complementary methods for the design and planning process. Full article

The objective of this study was to map the distribution pattern of gentrification, showing the adverse effect of urban parks. The study adopted the perspective that urban parks, which have thus far been featured in urban planning without much criticism, may actually bring about unintended effects. This study employed a theory of gentrification that has received increasing interest in urban sociology to investigate the other side of the gentrification phenomenon. We identified urban parks as the cause of the gentrification from the start, and verified and visualised the phenomenon in the case of the Gyeongui Line Forest Park. We determined that the area with the higher possibility of gentrification was that within 600 m of the park. Big data accumulated over the past decade were used to prepare a proactive, systematic procedure to address gentrification, which is materialising in diverse forms. Through this study, we contribute to debates on the environmental justice of urban parks. Small changes in urban space can strongly affect our healthy lifestyles and urban sustainability. From this perspective, our study’s research process and its results could provide indications of how to structure and manage new urban planning projects in the future. Full article