2SFCA Method to Assess Walking Accessibility of Cultural Facilities in Seoul: N-minute City and a Walkable Daily Life Zone

Recently, the “N-minute city” that provides an environment where people reach essential facilities and services for daily life within N minutes on foot, is attracting attention as an important urban planning model globally, including Paris, Ottawa, and Melbourne. Thus, Seoul Metropolitan Government has proposed the “Walkable Daily Life Zone” as a key goal in its Seoul 2040 Comprehensive Plan. The plan is to transform Seoul into a self-sufficient living sphere in which citizens can access home, cultural, leisure, workplace, and consumption facilities within a 30-minute walk. This study analyzed the pedestrian network of cultural spaces in Seoul using the 2SFCA technique and empirically examined the current state of pedestrian accessibility between residential and cultural spaces. The results can be summarized as follows. First, a significant disparity in pedestrian accessibility between the most accessible areas and other regions was confirmed. Second, pedestrian accessibility varies greatly among regions depending on the type of cultural space. Moreover, performance venues other than cultural centers, libraries, cultural and art centers, art museums, and museums/memorial halls exhibited significant differences in terms of accessibility, even within the same region. Third, if a region lacks or has an insufficient number of cultural spaces within a 2 km walking distance, citizens may use cultural spaces in other areas as part of their living sphere. Thus, to realize a Walkable Daily Life Zone for cultural spaces in Seoul, it is necessary to create a balanced cultural environment that considers pedestrian accessibility and promote policy cooperation for utilizing cultural spaces in other areas within walking distance.