Comparison of Characteristics of Rural Landscape Plan in Rural Village Development Project - Focused on the Sunchang-gun -

Abstract

The present study analyzes a case of a rural village development project to identify characteristics of rural landscape plans. The results of the analysis revealed that in the initial stage, rural landscape plans focused on renovating the livingscape, which included walls, vacant houses, and roofs. Beginning in 2010, landscape improvement projects were divided into areas such as the livingscape, and the village landscape, which included the natural landscape, ecological environment, and urban landscape, and planned to preserve the agricultural landscape and enhance under-developed landscapes. According to an analysis of the Sunchang-gun (a county in Jeollabuk-do, South Korea) area development project, the landscape improvement project was planned as a way of formation a new landscape. This indicates that the project was more focused on creating a new specialized landscape consisting of different areas, than it was on improving and maintaining the existing landscape. The livingscape, among all other components of the rural landscape, was addressed the most frequently by landscape projects, which placed emphasis on improving the landscape of the living environment, not the overall landscape of rural villages. Landscape improvement projects implemented tasks to highlight distinctive characteristics of the target area. For instance, the creation of a themed rest area or characteristic streetscape were treated with importance in all areas. However, landscape projects do not significantly contribute to shaping the overall rural landscape, as they focus on separate facilities instead of considering the overall rural landscape. Given that landscape projects constitute the only landscape-related effort in an area or village, they should be more heavily emphasized in rural village development projects.