Improvements in Evaluating Grids for Basic Living Infrastructure: The Case of Gwangjin District in Seoul, South Korea

Wooseok Kang,Narang Park,Wookjae Heo

doi:10.3390/socsci10010026

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze the current status and needs of infrastructure for basic life in Gwangjin district in Seoul, South Korea. In this study, we examined whether the national minimum standard was satisfied in terms of the infrastructure for basic life in the district. Specifically, we employed and compared the empirical utilities of two types of geographic datasets, 100-square-meter grids and 500-square-meter grids. The study compares the prediction accuracy between two types of geographic datasets by employing multivariate linear estimation using influential factors. The evaluation methods for prediction accuracy were to compare the root mean of squared error (RMSE) and mean of absolute error (MAE) from each dataset. The results were as follows: (a) the dataset with 100-square-meter grids showed more significant associations among influential factors and the infrastructure than the dataset with 500-square-meter grids; (b) the 100-square-meter grids showed better prediction accuracy compared with the 500-square-meter grids; and (c) in terms of basic level local government, it was more powerful to use the datasets with 100-square-meter grids for finding blind sides of infrastructure than the datasets with 500-square-meter grids. The results imply that it is necessary to adjust urban policy by using appropriate datasets, such as 100-square-meter grids.

Highlights

IntroductionResearchers have broadly classified basic living infrastructures into two categories: physical infrastructure and social infrastructure (Dash and Sahoo 2010; Kumari and Sharma 2017)
We show the main findings from the analysis; and in Conclusions, we expand on the meaning of the findings regarding how to improve the measuring method for understanding Social Overhead Capital (SOC) in South Korea
After the enactment of the Special Act on Urban Regeneration, this study is different from the existing research in that we closely analyzed the minimum standard for basic living infrastructure (Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements 2018), which was proposed by the Life SOC Promotion Team of the Office for Government Policy Coordination, and we examined the feasibility of the minimum standard

Summary

Introduction

Researchers have broadly classified basic living infrastructures into two categories: physical infrastructure and social infrastructure (Dash and Sahoo 2010; Kumari and Sharma 2017). This distinction is neither collectively exhaustive nor mutually exclusive, it helps to illustrate the functional characteristics of social overhead capital (Uzawa 1999). Physical infrastructure is a significant predictor of economic development (Dash and Sahoo 2010; Kumari and Sharma 2017)

Objectives

Methods

Results