Abstract
In many metropolitan areas, the urban fringe is defined by highly sensitive habitats such as forests and wetlands. However, the explosive growth of urban areas has led to the formation of informal settlements in the urban fringe, subsequently threatening these sensitive habitats and exaggerating several social and environmental problems. We seek to improve the current understanding of informal settlements and their formation in the metropolitan fringe through a comprehensive spatiotemporal analysis of the Guryong Area (GA) in the Gangnam District, Seoul, South Korea. We measured the land-use and land-cover (LULC) changes in the entire GA from 1950 to 2015, and then analyzed the changes in one specific land-use type defined as “spontaneous settlements”. We then combined these changes with landform and slope data in 600-m-wide bands along the gradient of urbanization. The results showed spontaneous settlements distributed in small clusters in 1975, and the growth of this distribution into larger, more condensed clusters beginning in 1985. Between 1950 and 2015, the total area of spontaneous settlements decreased, while the settlement locations shifted from the urban core to the marginal area of the GA. Meanwhile, the locations selected for spontaneous settlements moved from plain areas with slopes of 2–7%, to more steeply sloped, remote areas such as the mountain foothills with slopes of 15–30%. These results suggest that the spatial characteristics of informal settlements are shown in the degree of aggregation and marginalized trend indicated from the analysis of spontaneous settlements. Finally, we hope the spatial analysis can be used as a basis and starting point for the evaluation process of informal settlement redevelopments in other areas of Seoul, as well as in other Asian cities.
Highlights
This study aims to improve understandings of informal settlement formation in a metropolitan fringe, through a comprehensive spatiotemporal analysis of topographical characteristics, using the case study of the Guryong Area (GA) in the Gangnam District of Seoul, South Korea
The land use and land cover (LULC) changes indicated that (1) large areas of natural land were lost due to the dramatic increase in constructed areas (Figure 6); and (2) spontaneous settlements occupying natural lands continued to emerge after the period of rapid urban development (Table 4)
The band analysis indicated that the trend of marginalization was reflected in increasing spontaneous settlements in bands 1 and 2 since 1985 (Figure 7), while the percentage of spontaneous settlements in the other bands (2–6) decreased gradually with increasing distance from the Guryong Slum Village (GSV) (Figures 8b and 9)
Summary
Urban fringes are seen as unique land-use areas because of their geographic location, soil type, and topography [1] In these areas, the complex mosaic of land use and land cover (LULC) produces sprawling settlements characterized by low-density residential areas, neighbored with agricultural plots and farmlands. The complex mosaic of land use and land cover (LULC) produces sprawling settlements characterized by low-density residential areas, neighbored with agricultural plots and farmlands These areas are often defined by highly sensitive habitats such as forests, wetlands, and rivers [2,3]. The explosive growth of Asian mega-cities in the post-war decades has created a chaotic mixture of urban and rural land use in metropolitan fringes It has provoked the formation of several informal settlements in such areas, which has resulted in heightened social and environmental problems [4,5]
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