A study on sustainability of green space management in Seoul--A water footprint analysis of urban parks

Abstract

Urban greening that takes form in projects like urban parks construction, is a pragmatic and artistic way to transform our un-natural modern cities to ecological and sustainable ones. However, the cost of nature resource consumption for such transformations still lacks of deserved attention, which definitely will raise queries on the sustainability of these transformations. This study, based on field research on 8 urban parks in Seoul of South Korea, is trying to offer a new practical method to move us out of the dilemma by shedding light on the new water management paradigm: combining water footprint (WF) analysis with rainwater harvesting practices. This research, using water footprint analysis, estimated the annual fresh water consumption of several Seoul urban parks respectively, and the related rainwater resource that could be potentially utilized by taking the urban park existing landscapes into consideration. This study figured out that in order to maintain urban parks public services, considerable fresh water resource (varied with park type and size) needs to be consumed (the average WF per m2 of each park ranged from 340L/m2 to 444L/m2)

the recent urban water management neglected bountiful rainwater resource, which could be used for reducing WF consumption of each park locally (replacing around 9% to 38% current blue WF) by utilizing building roofs for rainwater collection.