Issue of pending parks that are designated by zoning as parks but not actually built as urban parks for a long term is a common and nationwide challenge to many local governments. By Il-mol-je, which is a regulation allows a designated park to be remo...
Issue of pending parks that are designated by zoning as parks but not actually built as urban parks for a long term is a common and nationwide challenge to many local governments. By Il-mol-je, which is a regulation allows a designated park to be removed from its zoning if it is not constructed as a park in 20 years from the designation. If the parks are released from the regulation, the city of Seoul in particular could lose 80% of the designated park sites and face significant challenges dealing with financial difficulties with approximately 6,000,000,000,000 won to be compensated to the original land owners. To resolve the issue, the government has established a special regulation so called, ‘Private Sector Development of Urban Parks’ through amendment of the ‘Act on Urban Parks, Greenbelts, Etc’ in 2009.
The special regulation is an exemption provided to a private sector developer to develop the designated park without damaging the initial functions of the park through an agreement between the private sector and the local government. Purpose of the legislation of the special regulation is to improve quality of life and resolve complaints and/or petitions by creating urban parks and improving the conditions.
However, the designated parks to be privately developed as alternatives to resolve the issue is just regulated by special articles in the ‘Act on Urban Parks, Greenbelts, Etc,’ yet explicit planning and design guidelines have not been provided for them. For instance, it is stated that the private park shall donate/accept 70-80% of the park site/facilities to the public as a public park and 20-30% of the park site can be developed for private facilities (non-park facilities) if the park is over 10,000 square meters in size. Nonetheless, details regarding ranges of park or non-park facilities, locations, type of facility installations, relevant regulations, appropriate applications, and etc. are ambiguous. It is limited to practically apply the regulations without trials and errors.
In addition, the designated park necessitates appropriate considerations as a park site understanding geographical and topographical features, ecology, restricted areas, zone, and as an urban facility exploring ranges of restrictions and potential uses. Therefore, it is essential to develop specific plan guidelines for the application of the private park system.
This thesis study is to propose phased planning considerations and design standards outlining phased investigations and tasks and to establish detailed guidelines practically applicable to the park sites by analyzing the special regulations and characteristics of the designated parks in Seoul, South Korea.