Prospects and retrospects to the urban geography studies in korea

한국 도시지리학 35년사

In celebrating a half century history of the Korean Geographical Society, this paper is concerned about research trends of the urban geography in Korea by reviewing of 449 papers and 15 books mainly in an urban geography field. The findings are summarized as follows: (1) The development of the urban geography in Korea has several stages; \circled1 The launching stage just after 1945; \circled2 the premature stage in the 1960s; \circled3 the taking-off stage in the 1970s; \circled4 the maturing stage in the 1980s; and \circled5 culminating stage in the as of 1990s. (2) The earlier studies had a few limited research themes without major debating issues. In the 1970s, various research themes had been introduced in the urban geography. More diverse themes have been studied in urban geography after the 1980s. The major themes in the urban geography included urbanization, urban structure, urban system, urban economic structure and so on. (3) The most frequent research area for the Korean urban geographers has been the Seoul metropolitan area followed by Kyongsang-Province region. Outside Korea, the most frequent research areas are the American cities followed by the cities of Japan, Canada, and France. (4) The urban geography in Korea has played a major role in introducing the quantitative methods and techniques into geography. For example over 30.5% out of papers in urban geography has taken the quantitative techniques in the past 35 years during the 1960-1994 period. The papers inside urban geography have counted more than 60 percent from research papers in major university journals and took 34.6 percent from the papers of the Journal of Korean Geographical Society.

우리나라의 지리학계는 대한지리학회 창립 50주년을 맞이하는 시점에서 조망해 볼 때에 많은 발전이 있었다. 특히 도시지리학 분야는 8.15광복과 더불어 성립기를 맞은 후, 정 립기, 전환기, 절정기, 성숙기를 거치면서 가장 빠른 속도로 발전해왔다. 도시연구의 주제는 도시화, 도시구조, 도시체계, 도시경제 등의 영역이 중심을 이루었고, 분석방법은 정량적 연 구방법을 적극적으로 활용하였다. 또한 도시지리학 연구는 수도권과 영남권을 대상으로 한 논문이 많았으며, 발표된 논문의 6할 이상은 각대학의 紀要에 발표되었고 학술지 중에서는 대한지리학회지에 게재된 논문이 가장 많았다.