What is urban vitality, and what is its relation to other factors of the urban environment? Urban vitality indicates how lively a space is; the degree of vitality indicates the successfulness of the space. As a gauge of an urban environment, it is important to explore how urban components relate to vitality. Studies that explore the causes and effects of urban vitality include prominent scholars in urban design such Kevin Lynch, Jane Jacobs, and Christopher Alexander. In this thesis, the dynamics of urban vitality of a small retail area located in the old city center of Daejeon Metropolitan City is investigated focusing from social and spatial perspectives. Is urban vitality more closely related to the social aspect such as the store owners’ affection toward their store location? Alternatively, is it more closely related to the spatial aspect such as the street layouts? Before carrying out the research, an assumption was made that social aspect will have more influence on the vitality dynamics than the spatial since the interaction between vitality and social components has a two-way interaction while the interaction between vitality and street layout has an one-way interaction.
For the purpose of this thesis, vitality was determined through pedestrian flows, the social aspect was indexed by surveying the store owners’ commitment level toward their retail location, and lastly, the spatial aspect was derived using the network analysis methods (closeness centrality and betweenness centrality) applied to streets from a segment angular analysis. The collected data were organized into a data set for a geographically weighted regression modeling where vitality is the dependent variable, social and spatial are the independent variables. In addition, confounding variables were included as explanatory variables to reduce the effects of factors that affect both the dependent and independent variables. Supportive of the research assumption, the coefficient for the retail location commitment scale turned out higher than that of the spatial variables throughout the site. This result proposes that vitality is associated more with the commitment level of the store owners than the street layout of the space. Urban policies that help to increase the commitment level of the retail owners is found to be more important than completely wiping out areas with low vitality to replace with a new town.
도시 활력이란 무엇이며 이는 사용자, 토지이용, 거리구조 등 다른 도시환경요소와 어떻게 연관되어있을까? 도시활력에 영향을 미칠 수 있는 요소들간의 상호작용은 제인 제이콥스 (Jane Jacobs), 케빈 린치 (Kevin Lynch), 및 크리스토퍼 알렉산더 (Christopher Alexander) 등의 저명한 도시학자들이 오랜 기간 동안 연구해온 바 있다. 본 연구에서는 도시활력의 개념을 이해하고 주어진 공간 내에서의 활력차이가 사회적 측면과 공간적 측면 중 어느 쪽에 더 많은 영향을 받는지 지리적 가중 회귀 (GWR) 분석 방법을 통해 알아보았다. 거리활력을 정량화 하기 위하여 보행자 수를 기록하였으며 사회적 요소로는 가게주를 대상으로 설문을 실시하였고, 공간적 요소는 공간구문론을 바탕으로 분석하였다. 연구 대상지로는 한 공간 내의 거리활력차이가 객관적으로 명확하게 드러나는 대전중앙시장을 선정하였다. 본 실험의 연구가설은 양방향성을 관계를 보이는 사회적 요소가 거리활력에 더 큰 영향을 친다는 것이다. 연구 결과는 연구가설과 부합하였다. 가게 주인이 느끼는 가게위치에 대한 몰입도 (commitment level) 계수가 거리구간간의 인접 중앙성 (closeness centrality)이나 매개 중앙성 (betweenness centrality)보다 높은 것으로 드러났다. 연구 결과를 종합하여 볼 때, 거리활력은 공간적 요소에 비해 사회적 요소와 더 큰 상호작용을 맺고 있음을 알 수 있으며, 대전중앙시장과 같은 소규모 활성화 구역에서 거리의 활력 균등화를 위하여 가게주인의 가게 위치에 대한 몰입도를 올리는 것이 가장 효과적이라고 결론 지을 수 있다.
