Recently, city parks have been recognized as important spaces for city residents in the face of social problems such as COVID-19, fine dust, and the climate crisis. Against this backdrop, the influence of natural environments such as city parks and ga...
Recently, city parks have been recognized as important spaces for city residents in the face of social problems such as COVID-19, fine dust, and the climate crisis. Against this backdrop, the influence of natural environments such as city parks and gardens on human life is increasing, leading to a quantitative increase in city parks as the city expands. However, as the quantitative increase in urban parks has reached its limit, the need for operation and utilization of urban parks
is now emerging, including utilization and maintenance of urban parks, expansion of citizen participation and programs, environmental issues, and sustainability. In that respect, public spaces such as parks can be said to be an effective means of functioning as a social platform to solve various social problems, and one of the ways to utilize city parks as spaces for citizen participation is the creation of community gardens.
In order to create a citizen-participatory garden culture, this study directly participated in the creation process of the Gangdong Community Garden in Amsa-dong, Gangdong-gu, Seoul, where a community garden is operated, and conducted research on ways to form a resident organization for a sustainable community garden.
Recently, community gardens have been created in various ways in Korea, but various problems are emerging in sustainability, such as resident participation, budget, and systems. Three major tasks were identified as major factors: first, formation of resident organizations, second, creation of gardens, and third, public-private partnerships.
Looking at overseas cases, the first process of forming a resident organization began with the voluntary will of residents to solve social problems such as food and environmental problems, whereas in Korea, it tended to be carried out for the purpose of leisure and environmental improvement, and was more driven by administrative concerns than residents' demands. Because it was conducted as a policy project, the biggest limit to the sustainability of participating entities was revealed. This was analyzed as a factor in the lack of experience and system to form a voluntary and independent community during the resident organization process.
Second, as the history of community gardens in Uranara is short, the gardening culture of citizens has not matured, and this has resulted in conflicts due to lack of community spirit and limitations in expertise in the garden creation process. It was determined that this process required the help of a coordinator with professional capabilities in the field of design or construction.
Lastly, because of the problem of securing land for the creation of community gardens in cities, the use of city parks emerged, and laws, institutions, and public-private partnerships were needed to utilize public spaces called city parks. However, there are still many difficulties before a consensus on citizen participation and public-private partnerships is formed.
In conclusion, for a sustainable community garden, an independent resident organization must be formed, cooperation between experts, supplementation of laws and systems, and public-private partnerships were absolutely necessary. In that sense, deriving a checklist for creating a community garden can be said to be a meaningful achievement.
Limitations of the study include the short period of operation of the community garden, so it was not possible to analyze the change factors in all processes of start, growth, and decline, and there is no certainty that the community garden will be maintained continuously when the Amsa Historical Park is created, so how will the community garden be maintained in the future? There is a possibility that it will not be possible to observe whether it is managed and whether the resident community operates.