|
Due to its location in a valley surrounded by mountains, the amount of green space per person within the Seoul 25-gu area is rather high at 25.7 square meters per capita. However, a large portion include mountainous areas which are not accessible. When limited to parks in residential areas, the figure is 3.7 square meter per capita, which is substantially less than other major cities. When parks in mountainous regions within the city are included, Seoul provides 14.94 square meter of park space per resident, either the same or higher level than what is found in New York or Paris and roughly 5 times higher than in Tokyo:
|
City
|
Population, mil
|
Parkland/capita, m2
|
|
|
Toronto
|
2.4
|
46.9
|
|
London 32-boroughs
|
6.6
|
25.3
|
|
Seoul 25-gu
|
10.1
|
14.9
|
|
New York 5-boroughs
|
8.1
|
13.9
|
|
Paris 20-arrondissements
|
2.1
|
8.0
|
|
Tokyo 23-ward1
|
8.5
|
2.9
|
|
|
1
|
source: Keizai Koho Center, Japan 1999: An International Comparison, 106, 1999.
|
Nonetheless, this amount of parkland doesn't seem to be sufficient for the Seoulites. Other than the 3.3 million trees that have been planted in the city since 1998, several projects aimed at further increasing the parkland have taken place in the last decade. Noteworthy are the Yeoido plaza as well as the traffic turnabout in front of the city hall which have been transformed into parks. Further, the Chongyecheon overpass highway has been demolished and the 5.8 km-long stream restored at a cost of 360 billion wons, while a new urban woodland called the Seoul forest has been developped at a cost of 224 billion wons (1 billion wons is slightly more than 1 million $US at the April 2006 exchange rate).
Here are a few pictures taken in Gwanak-san, one of the several parks located in mountaineous regions.
|
