The lifting of Green Belt in Korea has been continuously discussed since 1998. In particular, it is pointed as a problem that many local governments recently demanded grade adjustments for the 1st and 2nd grades, which had been designated and mainta ...
The lifting of Green Belt in Korea has been continuously discussed since 1998. In particular, it is pointed as a problem that many local governments recently demanded grade adjustments for the 1st and 2nd grades, which had been designated and maintained as conservation zones for regional development or strengthening competitiveness, or attempted to grade them in an anomalous manner. Accordingly, the re-evaluation of the environmental assessment grade was conducted in 2014 and 2015, and the possible changes in the environmental assessment grade of green belt was revealed.
First, in the first year of research, the changes in the 1st and 2nd grade areas of the Seoul Metropolitan Area were compared and analyzed, and their ideal utilization and efficient management were examined.
Next, based on 2014, when the re-evaluation of the environmental assessment grade was made, the environmental assessment grade of the Seoul Metropolitan Government's green belt was analyzed by dividing into two periods, 1999-2014 and 2014-2019. It is noted that most of the 1st and 2nd grades showed an increase, while the 3rd to 5th grades showed a decrease from 1999 to 2014. However, it was confirmed that, on the contrary, there was a clear decrease in the 2nd grade areas and an increase in the 3rd grade areas between 2014 and 2019, which is after the re-evaluation of environmental assessment grades of the green belt.
In the second year of research, the policy changes in the green belt areas were analyzed by time, type, and content, which were resulted from the implementation of measures to improve the green belt area from the time of designation in 1971 until December 2019. This research showed the process of policy changes and the lifting of the green belt areas and its changing patterns. By analyzing the government gazettes from 2001 to the end of March 2019 related to the lifting or change of the green belt, there are 31 presidential decrees, 16 ministerial decrees, 17 laws, 44 notices, 46 public notices, and 132 local government ordinances. By year, the number of presidential decree, ministerial decree, and law since 2010 is more prominent than before 2010, especially between 2014 and 2017. Meanwhile, the case of local government ordinances, 81 cases, or 61.4% of the total 132 cases, were announced and implemented between 2004 and 2007. On the other hand, it is confirmed that the public notices were published evenly every year from 2001 until present.
Based on this analysis, the 3rd year of research applied the concept of 'regional resilience' to the regional development or strengthening regional competitiveness that most local governments recently showed their interests. For the selection of indicators related to resilience, six persuasive indicators were selected based on previous research related to index both in Korea and other countries. They are population-related indicators, physical and infrastructure-related indicators, innovative capital indicators, economy-related indicators, social and cultural indicators, and ecological indicators. Indicators for the resilience of the regional economy in the Seoul metropolitan area and the measures related to its utilization were addressed on this study.
The study examined the changes in grades since the implementation of the environmental assessment re-evaluation. It is meaningful that this study approached to increase the efficiency of green belt by discussing the utilization of 1st and 2nd grades which have been relatively increased, and decreased 3rd grade areas in conjunction with 'regional resilience'.