A Study on Revitalization of Rooftop Garden by Assessing the Publicness : a Case of Mullae Roof Garden, Mullae-dong, Seoul
Urban agriculture, which can be defined as agriculture performed in a city, is suggested as an alternative solution to restore deserted community and expand green land in city area through cultivation activities. In Korea, ‘Urban Agriculture Promotion and Support Act’ was enforced from May 2012. In addition, in the same year, Seoul Metropolitan Government declared ‘the beginning of urban agriculture era,’ established municipal ordinance, and increased budget to actively support urban agriculture. As a result, urban agriculture practices have been increasing every year. Yet, the way of developing urban agriculture in a uniform way of expanding green land has led to difficulties of securing proper spaces. Accordingly, ‘roof top’ spaces have gained attention. This study analyzes rooftop garden, one of the spaces of carrying out urban agriculture, from the publicness perspective. The study selected a case study of a public rooftop garden in Mullae-dong, Yeongdeungpo-gu, investigated present conditions and usage features of the garden, and explored the conditions to be a ‘public’ roof top garden. Through theoretical analysis, both physical and non-physical indicators were derived for analysis framework; physical aspects- accessibility, locality, openness, comfortness, and non-physical aspects- subjectivity, cooperativeness, and a sense of community. The results of this study are as follows. First, openness and locality scores were the highest, and comfortness scored the lowest, in ensuring the publicness of Mullae roof top garden. Second, non-physical indicators had stronger effect than physical indicators on rooftop garden users’ awareness on publicness and building a garden community. In conclusion, in order to vitalize roof top garden, users should be engaged from the very first planning stage of building a garden, opening hours should not be limited, and more importance should be put on users to subjectively manage the operation of rooftop garden than merely creating a physical environment.