Factors Influencing Urban Livability in Seoul, Korea: Urban Environmental Satisfaction and Neighborhood Relations

Abstract

This study examines the correlations between urban environmental satisfaction, neighborhood relations, and livability. Previous studies on livability have insufficiently dealt with urban environments and neighborhood relations and have failed to conduct an integrated analysis that considers the causal relationships between these factors. To fill these knowledge gaps, this study includes urban environmental satisfaction and neighborhood relations as factors affecting livability. Moreover, this study verified the mediating effect of neighborhood relations between urban environmental satisfaction and livability. Online surveys were carried out with 750 residents in Seoul, South Korea, and the structural equation model (SEM) was employed. The results indicated that a higher level of urban environmental satisfaction affected livability positively. In particular, the accessibility had the greatest effect on livability. In addition, neighborhood relations had a mediating effect on the pleasantness and safety of urban environments. Today, many developing countries are undergoing rapid urbanization, as Seoul has experienced in the past. However, this can cause a number of simultaneous side effects, which lower livability. Furthermore, this leads to population decline which might hinder urban sustainability. Therefore, this study suggests important policy implications for achieving urban sustainability by improving livability.

Contribution of Community Resilience to City’s Livability within the Framework of Sustainable Development

“…Urban livability is reflected by (reflective indicators) from the most influential: social life, economy, and urban environment. This finding confirms similar research that neighbourhood relations influence urban livability (Lee, 2021). The finding also confirms that other factors may contribute to livability in the sub-districts, particularly factors that influence the urban environment variable.…”

The impact of geometric and land use elements on the perceived pleasantness of urban layouts

“…Those authors also found that higher proportions of vegetation and the presence of trees mitigate the aforementioned negative effects. Trees were also seen by Basu et al (2022) to contribute to a more pleasant walking experience, while Lee (2021) argued, via a structural equation model, that large urban parks contribute to urban satisfaction. D’Acci (2014) approached pleasantness from a financial perspective, having found that more green areas and wider open spaces lead to higher real estate values.…”

“…Of the quantitative studies, only Calafiore (2020) and Li et al (2021) used field data to obtain a pleasantness indicator, respectively, a beauty index and a street quality index. Quantitative work exists on the impact of isolated geometric elements on pleasantness (Asgarzadeh et al, 2012; D’Acci, 2014; Lee, 2021; Wang et al, 2021), but none of these works have evaluated the combined landscape at the neighborhood scale. Thus, the literature on quantitative evaluation of layout pleasantness is very much in its infancy.…”

Urban Boundary Demarcation—An iCN Model Approach

“…Therefore, it can precisely identify the cities and their corresponding urban boundaries by the iCN Model approach. The model applied the percolation theory (i.e., bond percolation) on the road intersection points to determine the urban agglomeration pattern of cities by utilizing the accessibility and locational proximity of the transportation network (Lee 2021). Then, it utilized Fractal Geometry to compute the maximum self-similarity distribution of percolation clusters, which calibrate the estimated urban agglomeration pattern with the current urban scale.…”

“…Cities are the outcome of the historical evolution of space, clustered and stacked according to the communities and resource agglomeration over many decades (Lee 2021). This integrated nature of city clusters form different city scales according to their degree of urban agglomeration, which have caused dramatic changes in the urban boundaries of cities.…”