Abstract
The purposes of this study are to develop the concept and the measurement method of IGS(Index of Greenness in Streetscape) and to analyze the present condition of street environments through field surveys of IGS in Seoul. IGS is a new index which directly expresses human's perceptions of plants in a street and defined as the area ratio of which leaves of plants occupy in an eye-level view of a person standing on the center line of a street. In practice, IGS can be calculated from a photograph taken from a center point of a street at about 1.5 meter height from the ground with single lens reflex camera equiped with 50mm standard lens. The photograph must have a special composition in a way that the center point of the photograph is positioning at the visual vanishing point of street center line. Then the IGS can be calculated by computing the percentage of the area covered with the plant leaves in the photograph. Types of streets in Seoul were classified according to road functions into 4 types. We performed field surveys and calculated IGSs from 300 sample sites in Seoul. Followings summarize some of study results. The average IGSs for arterial roads, highways, alleys and back streets are 16.91%, 16.33%, 13.97% and 7.50% respectively. The difference of average IGS values between Ginkgo biloba and Platanus occidentalis was relatively large. From observation IGSs from April 4th, 2003 to October 2nd, 2003, it was evident that the range and timing of each plant species' IGS change is not the same. According to questionnaire to public officials taking charge of street greening, the current evaluated IGS is 24.4%, and it is expected to be 40.7% in the future.
