The direction of urban development and policy implications for response to climate change – the case of Gwangju Metropolitan City, Republic of Korea

This study investigates the case of Gwangju Metropolitan City, which has been developing preemptive policies to cope with the impact of climate change. It is necessary and important to examine empirical data on how Gwangju Metropolitan City has promoted its preemptive response to climate change. The concept of climate change, the status of climate change, and the energy consumption of each sector were first identified, and trends and prospects of changes in traffic conditions, and the status of parks and green spaces were examined using indicators from a 10 year period (2002–2011). Relevant variables were selected from the climate carbon map constituents presented in the ‘2030 Gwangju Metropolitan City Master Plan’ report, and key urban indicators and low-carbon indicators presented in ‘A Study on the Construction of Climate Carbon Map in Gwangju’. Cluster analysis using the factor scores of the factors extracted through these variables, followed by principal component analysis and k­medians nonhierarchical cluster analysis, were carried out using STATA 11.1. Thereafter, SWOT analysis was performed to classify the environmental factors (strengths and weaknesses) and external environmental factors (opportunities and threats) into categories based on the variables extracted from Gwangju Metropolitan City’s response to climate change. The purpose of this study is therefore to classify the above-mentioned trends in urban development responses to climate change into factorization types classified by principal component analysis, and to analyse the results of SWOT analysis and factors that can mitigate the urban heat island phenomenon based on the derived factors and the development of public transit-oriented urban development (TOD). This study serves not only as basic research data in presenting urban development strategies for future climate change, but also suggests policy implications.