Evaluation of Eco-Village Planning Characteristics by Introducing Landscape Unit System

The purpose of this research is to evaluate five types of eco-village planning in order to introduce a landscape unit concept and theory in Korea. Although they had different backgrounds and motives of eco-villages planning, their common goal is to always maintain ecological planning and design in their villages. As concrete methods of ecological planning, we suggest three fundamental planning theories. 1. The boundary of a plan unit should be a watershed. 2. The survey and analysis of village ecotopes should be done in that defined watershed. 3. These results should be applied in the site and lot planning of eco-villages. These 3 steps should be done in a process and relevantly. In the evaluation of the five eco-village planning types, we found three results. 1. On a viewpoint of watershed, most planners recognized a watershed in survey and planning stages unconsciously. But they did not mention watersheds concretely and did not use this concept in the planning stage. 2. They did not define the concept of ecotope, but most planners recognized land-uses and vegetations of villages and vicinities as ecotopes. Also these could be proper ecotopes, but they did not use these compartment of ecotopes in the planning of ecosystem structure in villages. In addition, they did not deeply survey and analyze the ecotopes of villages and its vicinity. 3. On the viewpoint of sites and lots planning, they did not relevantly use the characteristics of watersheds and ecotopes in sites and lots planning. Therefore, they failed to implement the indigenous lots and subdivisions plan. In the size of lots and sites, they did not seriously consider the carrying capacity of ecosystem. We hope that our suggestion about the establishment of eco-villages planning is a fundamental theoretical framework of ecological planning in future eco-village planning.

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