• Land and Housing Review
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.59-68
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• 2020

Converting vacant lands for urban agriculture has become a popular topic for American cities to engage in on a program and policy level. The advocates of urban agriculture cite a number of potential benefits, ranging from promoting sustainable urban development, fostering social interaction and educational opportunities, regenerating neighborhoods, and empowering residents. With the emergence of vacant lands in South Korea, different strategies have been implemented for productive use. Nonetheless, less attention has been paid to reinvent vacant lands for urban agriculture. Therefore, this study has examined the case of the City of Milwaukee's vacant land initiatives and programs that were known to have brought a series of positive neighborhood revitalization outcomes. Compared to the case of Milwaukee, intensive land use and high property prices have turned to be the major actors that prevent an active use of vacant land for urban agriculture within the context of South Korean cities. Thus, this paper proposes the possibility of using vacant lands in apartment complexes for urban agriculture.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.33-47
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• 2020

With population losses and stagnant or depressed economies, the local governments embrace shrinkage and accept having a significantly smaller population. Both the initial and ongoing causes of shrinkage hold dramatic effects on the city and its remaining residents. In this context, vacant land increases as an overabundance of unused infrastructure is demolished and municipalities become burdened with increasing maintenance costs of this land. The result is that vacant land often experiences minimal management relative to social norms and have chance to provide a setting for ecological processes with urban rightsizing strategy. Therefore, urban ecosystems undergo major shifts in structure and function. We need to better understand the possibilities of where and how much of houses and land will be abandoned to assist land planners and policymakers to mitigate conflict between optimal ecological and sociological outcomes. This article, therefore, aims to identify distributional characteristics of vacant houses and lands with case study of Mokpo. The study found and verified affecting factors of vacant houses and lands by type through the use of a Maxent model and spatial data that explained housing choice and preference theory. We can predict the vacancies with the spatial variables such as land price, the population ratio over 65, and the distance from security facility. Based on the analysis, the ways of managing housing and land vacancy for sustainable development and ecological restoration method are discussed.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.142-150
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• 2021

To analyze the distribution characteristics of alien plants in various habitat types, 249 sites were selected from four administrative districts in the Gyeongsang region of Korea. The survey was conducted across nine different habitat types. A total of 115 species of alien plants were collected; comprising 23 families, 73 genera, 112 species, and 3 varieties. Species from the family Compositae were the most common at 33.0%. Raunkiaer's life forms had the highest occurrence rate with 70 species(60.9%) of therophytes(Th) followed by 30 species (26.1%) of hemicryptophytes (H) and 8 species (7.0%) of geophytes (G). The distributions of alien plant species per habitat type were: 81 species on the roadside; 80 species on vacant lots and artificial habitats; 67 species in streams; 53 species in grasslands; 47 species in cultivated lands; and 39 species on the coast. Since 2017, the number of alien plants has increased in Gyeongju-si, Cheongdo-gun, and Pohang-si, and decreased in Ulsan Metropolitan-si. In each region, 614 taxa were observed. The invasive alien species, Sicyos angulatus, Hypocaeris radicata, and Solanum carolinense, were observed for the first time and are expected to further increase the disturbance of the ecosystem.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.46-58
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• 2024

Pollinators are organisms that carry out the pollination process of plants and include Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera, Diptera, and Coleoptera. Among them, bees not only pollinate plants but also improve urban green spaces damaged by land use changes, providing a habitat and food for birds and insects. Today, however, the number of pollinating plants is decreasing due to issues such as early flowering due to climate change, fragmentation of green spaces due to urbanization, and pesticide use, which in turn leads to a decline in bee populations. The decline of bee populations directly translates into problems, such as reduced biodiversity in cities and decreased food production. Urban beekeeping has been proposed as a strategy to address the decline of bee populations. However, there is a problem asurban beekeeping strategies are proposed without considering the complex structure of the socio-ecological system consisting of bees foraging and pollination activities and are therefore unsustainable. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the socio-ecological system of honeybees, which are pollinators, structurally using system thinking and propose a green space planning strategy to revitalize urban beekeeping. For this study, previous studies that centered on the social and ecological system of bees in cities were collected and reviewed to establish the system area and derive the main variables for creating a causal loop diagram. Second, the ecological structure of bees' foraging and pollination activities and the structure of bees' ecological system in the city were analyzed, as was the social-ecological system structure of urban beekeeping by creating an individual causal loop diagram. Finally, the socio-ecological system structure of honey bees was analyzed from a holistic perspective through the creation of an integrated causal loop diagram. Citizen participation programs, local government investment, and the creation of urban parks and green spaces in idle spaces were suggestedas green space planning strategies to revitalize urban beekeeping. The results of this study differ from previous studies in that the ecological structure of bees and the social structure of urban beekeeping were analyzed from a holistic perspective using systems thinking to propose strategies, policy recommendations, and implications for introducing sustainable urban beekeeping.