The global spread of COVID-19, which first occurred in December 2019, is causing a significant impact on community and urban vitality of cities. In particular, the prolonged pandemic in the city causes economic weakness and a contraction in private co...
The global spread of COVID-19, which first occurred in December 2019, is causing a significant impact on community and urban vitality of cities. In particular, the prolonged pandemic in the city causes economic weakness and a contraction in private consumption, causing a negative impact on the urban commercial areas.
Against this backdrop, our study aims to analyze the impact of pandemic on social and economic vitality of commercial areas by comparing the fourth quarter of 2019 and 2020 of Seoul commercial areas empirically. In this study, commercial vitality was defined as social vitality and economic vitality measured by floating population and sales of commercial areas. The vitality of commercial area was analyzed according to types of commercial areas such as alley commercial areas, devleoped commercial areas, traditional market areas and the internal characteristics of each commercial area was dervied by analyzing changes in vitality and the correlation between social and economic vitality. The major findings derived from the study are as follows.
First, the ratio of the resident and the worker population, size of district and store density that explains social and physical characteristics of commercial area is different according to the type of commercial area. And it was confirmed that these characteristics will affect the change in the vitality of the commercial area after COVID-19.
Second, the decrease in economic vitality is greater than that of social vitality. In addition, the degree of decrease in vitality differed by type of commercial district and time period. In alley commercial districts and traditional markets, there is a large decrease in social vitality during the week, but in developed commercial districts and special tourist areas, the decrease in social vitality is large on weekends. During the night time, social and economic vitality decrease in all types of commercial districts due to the social distancing policy. In terms of economic vitality, the decrease in vitality was small in alley commercial districts and traditional markets compared to developmental commercial districts and special tourist areas. In particular, economic vitality increased in traditional markets significantly on weekends.
Third, the degree of correlation between social vitality and economic vitality differs by time period. During the day time period, social vitality has a negative correlation with economic vitality. This results demonstrate that the purpose of the transit population within social vitality is diverse in day time. On the other hand, there is a positive correlation during the night time because the number of commuters in social vitality is highly related to economic vitality in night time. Looking at the degree of correlation of the difference in social and economic vitality between 2020 and 2019, the change of social and economic vitality after COVID-19 has a positive correlation in alley commercial districts. It is believed that alley commercial districts has more sustainable vitality after COVID-19 due to the high proportion of the resident population.
Fourth, the number of commercial areas with increased social and economic vitality is higher in alley commercial districts and traditional markets. In particular, in the case of alley commercial districts, the vitality of the commercial area was maintained especially in residential-oriented spaces with a large number of people living at night time. In the case of traditional market, the vitality of the commercial area has increased especially in the area where store density is not high and the social vitality is high. On the other hand, in developed commercial areas and special tourism areas, where there are many office workers and attracting facilities, the vitality of the commercial area has decreased significantly.
In short, the degree of change in the vitality of commercial areas after COVID-19 differs depending on the type of commercial district and internal characteristic factors. Therefore, for the sustainability of commercial areas in the era of the pandemic, it is necessary to monitor the extent of damage to the commercial area using various data, and to take this into consideration for government support and creation of sustainable commercial area.