Daily Destinations and Measuring Urban Proximity for 30-minute City in Seoul
Submitted by siadmin on Tue, 05/14/2024 - 17:35Climate change and COVID-19 have greatly changed the daily lives of Seoul citizens. Physical isolation caused by social distancing, heavy rain and heavy snow forced Seoul citizens to do most of their daily activities within the neighborhood living area. Accordingly, demand for hospitals and work spaces near residential areas increased significantly during the pandemic, and demand for delivery of daily necessities, food and groceries also increased. These changes were reflected in urban planning in Seoul, and Seoul Metropolitan Government announced the establishment ‘first-and-last mile locality infrastructure’ plan.
This is the process of converting urban planning from an omniscient perspective plan divided by roads to hyperlocal planning centered on the spatial scope experienced by individual Seoul citizens. Therefore, it is time to analyze the daily lives of individual citizens and examine the urban proximity and necessary daily destinations. Assuming that citizens use credit cards to obtain goods or services in their daily lives, we looked at citizens' daily living areas through credit card data. As a result of analyzing credit card sales data by the census tract, the average travel distance for consumption purposes of Seoul citizens was estimated to be 5.32㎞. The travel distance of citizens in the census tract was estimated to be 1.1㎞ to 19.5㎞, showing a large deviation. On the other hand, the travel distance of citizens in the neighborhood planning unit was 4.2㎞ to 7.1㎞, and it was found that the accessibility to necessary facilities for daily use of Seoul citizens in the outskirt of the city was generally poor. The consumption movement ratio, which is the ratio of movement of Seoul citizens in neighborhood planning unit, was estimated to be 24.7% to 48.7% in a neighborhood planning area. From a self-sufficiency point of view, the self-sufficient neighborhood units were the residential area behind the job center or the main school districts, whereas neighborhoods dependent on other regions were characterized as green outskirts of the city, low-rise high-density residential areas, and areas cut off by linear transportation facilities such as tracks, lanes, etc.. Among the various facilities that Seoul citizens use in their daily lives, there are facilities that are both frequently used and close to their residence. In this study, this was defined as everyday destinations and classified as facilities that should be included in the neighborhood plan. As a result of cross-analysis of the distance and frequency of use of credit card, facilities such as super stores/supermarkets, convenience stores, laundry shops, butchers, academies, oriental medicine clinics, beauty salons, and eyeglasses stores were classified as everyday destinations due to their high frequency of use and being close to the residence.
From a territorial justice point of view, the density of facilities and the travel distance to the facility were cross-examined to identify neighborhoods that residents had to travel far due to lack of facilities in the neighborhoods. As a result of the analysis, there were neighborhoods that residents moved far to use the facilities due to the shortage of facilities such as general hospitals in the neighborhood.
On the other hand, it was found that even if everyday facilities such as academies are nearby, there are also preferred locations for which citizens travel far away.
The location of everyday destinations determines the movement of Seoul citizens, and the location of private facilities among them is determined by strong market principles. It means that some areas cannot avoid poor accessibility to facilities required for daily life. Therefore, the public needs to manage the location of everyday destinations by reviewing whether they are lacking or not, noting that the location of these facilities can change or improve citizens' daily lives.