In Korea, spatial disparity and polarization in city are getting worsened through rapid urbanization and suburbanization. The increasing of social conflict due to polarization is regarded as an important social problem that it can hinder social integr...
In Korea, spatial disparity and polarization in city are getting worsened through rapid urbanization and suburbanization. The increasing of social conflict due to polarization is regarded as an important social problem that it can hinder social integration. The polarization in city may come from the uneven distribution of urban resources and public facilities. The purpose of this study is to examine the polarization phenomenon in cities and make the urban policy responses against the polarization, in terms of accessibility for the urban infrastructure and the public service facilities.
The concept of polarization in city is that the groups of certain spatial units are clustered into several groups and concurrently the homoginuity in group is strengthening. Based on these concept definitions, this study does the analysis of accessibility for urban public
service facilities such as public libraries, national daycare centers, welfare centers for the elderly, public medical institutions, subway stations and parks. The study areas are five major cities of Suwon, Goyang, Seongnam, Yongin and Bucheon.
The results of the analysis show that the public library has a low accessibility to the eastern part of Yongin city. National daycare centers showed good approach in Bundang, Pangyo area and Bucheon city of Seongnam city. There were many differences in accessibility between the elderly welfare center and the public medical institutions. Goyang city was highly accessible, but Yongin and Suwon were not good in some areas. In the case of subway stations, the area around the main artery connecting to Seoul showed comparatively equal accessibility, but the accessibility in the outskirts of each metropolitan area was significantly lower.
In order to measure the degree of polarization of urban public service access time, the distance and time required to access each urban public service facility in each naighborhoods were derived and analyzed by the Gini coefficient as the polarization index. As a result of the analysis, Yongin and Koyang, which started as urban and rural complex cities, showed a relatively larger polarization of accessibility. In addition, the polarization of accessibility of Goyang and Seongnam, which are divided into new city and old town, is relatively larger. However, in generally speaking that coefficient 0.4 over is severe, the polarization level of the major cities of the Gyeonggi Province is not serious.
Based on the results of this study, we propose the following policy. First, as a institution improvement central government need to revise urban public facility standards and add provisions for securing citizens" accessibility (distance and time). Second, regional and city governments need to pursue "citizen accessibility - oriented public facility policy". As a detailed improvements, it is necessary to determine the city planning facilities equitably in terms of city public service, to construct a transportation infrastructure accessible to the city center from anywhere in the city, to promote mixed use evelopment projects around the stations or metropolitan transit bus stops, and establishment of resident participation and governance system in determining facility location.