The issues on climate change caused from urbanization and industralization are coming true recently, a social polarization caused from economic downturn resulted the collapse of the community which has harmful effect. Meanwhile, the food imbalance cau...
The issues on climate change caused from urbanization and industralization are coming true recently, a social polarization caused from economic downturn resulted the collapse of the community which has harmful effect. Meanwhile, the food imbalance caused from income gap, the uneasiness of the nation on food safety caused from Foreign agricultural imports and Genetically modified food get serious. As an alternative to solve these urban issues, urban agriculture has been emerged worldwide, in recent years, its interest has been increasing in Korea.
According to this trend, the urban agriculture has been activated but the actual situation shows the value owned by urban agriculture was approached not by essential view but by simply functional view. This study focused on the fact that urban agriculture has a multi-function which include community formation, emotional healing through Restoration of the relationship of citizens, Recovering from an ecological point of view on environment and food issues, beyond the simple function where urban agriculture produces a hobby activity and small sized food by utilizing unused land.
This study verified the value of urban agriculture beyond the function of simple production by analyzing the awareness change through the participation to urban agriculture. For this, the concept, type and domestic and international cases of urban agriculture were reviewed while the cases of ‘Gangdong-gu eco-friendly urban agriculture’ in which urban agriculture was the most developed in Seoul, was intensively analyzed through 2 sessions of participants survey. The first session of survey analyzed the actual situation of urban agriculture participants in the region of case study while the second session analyzed the relation between participation of urban garden and participant consciousness. The participants motives were reviewed in the aspect of environment consciousness, food safety, health consciousness and community consciousness to analyze which changes the participation to urban garden has brought in the view of this 3 consciousness.
Through the effect of participants consciousness change among many functions of urban agriculture was concretely figured out through this, the development direction for urban agriculture activation was suggested. The summary of important analysis result drawn by this study is as follow.
First, when the consciousness on environment, food safety, health and community of urban garden activity participants are generally reviewed, it is verified that the participants showed the high consciousness on the seriousness of environmental issues, they were also aware that urban garden helped the environmental conservation, ecosystem circulation, and urban environment improvement. Furthermore most respondents were aware of the concept of food safety, local and slow food. As most participants responded that the exchange with residents was increased relating with the possibility of community restoration of urban agriculture which has been highlighted recently, which shows the urban agriculture can be a good media relating to local community.
Second, when the correlation between the participation level of urban agriculture and participants consciousness is reviewed, their correlation can be verified. First of all, there was a clear correlation between environmental consciousness, participation period in the urban garden, number of visits and interest level of urban agriculture. But there was no clear correlation between the time to stay in urban garden and past agriculture experience and environmental consciousness. Next the consciousness on food safety and healthy shows the clear correlation with the participation period, the number of visit and the time to stay in urban garden, shows no correlation with past agriculture experience. In the urban agriculture interest level, the consciousness was gradually increased according to interest increase but it sharply dropped when they think it gets as important as their jobs. Finally the local community consciousness shows the clear correlation with the number of visit, the time to stay in urban garden and the interest on urban agriculture, but shows no correlation with the participation organization. No clear correlation between participation period, agriculture experience and local community consciousness shows that participants still accept urban agriculture as a personal activity.
Third, when the consciousness change is analyzed according to participation level, all of consciousness on environment, food safety, health and community show correlation. first, the change of environmental consciousness gets increased when the participation period of urban garden, the average time to spend in the garden, the number of visit and interest on urban agriculture get increased, it shows no clear correlation with past agriculture experience. Next the consciousness change of food safety and health also show the same correlation with the participation level of urban garden. Finally the consciousness change of local community shows the correlation with the participation period of urban garden, the number of visit and interest and the interest on urban agriculture but shows no correlation with past agriculture experience. The relation with the time to spend in garden resulted the increase of local community activation consciousness for the first time but when they stay in garden more than 4 hours, it shows no significant correlation.
In short, we can research through this study that the urban agriculture participation is very closely related with participants consciousness, its participation level influence the consciousness change on environment, food safety, health and local community positively. Especially it was verified that there exist very significant correlation between the consciousness of food safety and health, the participation to urban garden is the important influence factor of consciousness change in this view. It was also proved that the participation to urban agriculture has the correlation with the consciousness of environment and local community and the change of these two consciousness. But the regression analysis shows that this consciousness shows less significant correlation with urban agriculture participation rather than the consciousness on food safety and health. Finally the persons who prepare the return to farm or job among participants have the different consciousness, they also show the different consciousness change pattern.
This result provides the important implications to the policies relating to urban agriculture including urban garden activation. It implies that the participations to urban agriculture were triggered by the consciousness on food safety and health, and such a contribution to consciousness change will make synergy effect with the pubic interest increase and the participation on urban agriculture which can bring the growth of urban agriculture. Next the fact that the participation to urban agriculture can bring the change of community consciousness but its level is weak, it suggests that the policy to strengthen the activity of community is required in order to develop the urban garden activation policy. For this, the change from government-led method through budget input so far to participants-oriented should be required. Finally as the participants to urban garden activity as a career have different consciousness and demand, the separate and customized program should be developed.