The purpose of this paper is to analyze the change of the urban spatial structure as (United) Changwon City is newly launched and to suggest a general urban management plan for the future.
For this study, an empirical analysis was carried out through comparing urban spatial form, urban spatial distribution patterns, spatial effects and regional convergence between before and after administrative district consolidation. It conducted the case study of housing-prices in (United) Changwon City.
The results of this study are summarized as four main categories:
First, the results of urban spatial form analysis are as following;
In case of (United) Changwon City, urban spatial form became diversified forward Jinhae in before-consolidation and the distance from CBD became less important in after-consolidation. But the centrality of CBD was still maintained.
Masan represented mono-centric form which had kept local centrality instead that it had not been closely interregional relationship between others even though it became unified as administrative district consolidation,
On the other hand, Jinhae had been depended on CBD in before-consolidation, but the accessibility from CBD showed statistically no significant results in after-consolidation.
That is, (United) Changwon City represented Multi-centric city which Changwon has formed mono-centric structure while Masan has formed another mono-centric structure.
Second, the analysis results of urban spatial distribution patterns are as following;
(United) Changwon City showed spatial cluster aspects which neighboring regions had similar housing-price group, i.e. high-price level regions or otherwise were clustering each other in location. But it was different with the results when 3 cities were decomposed respectively. Changwon showed spatially strong clustering and spatial cluster was increased in after-consolidation. Masan showed spatially weak clustering and showed little spatial cluster in after-consolidation. On the other hand, Jinhae showed spatially weak clustering in before-consolidation and random walk in after-consolidation. The results of spatial clustering in (United) Changwon City derived from Changwon but not from Masan and Jinhae.
Third, the analysis results of spatial effects such as spatial autocorrelation and spatial heterogeneity are as following;
The most appropriate model for this analysis was spatial lag model(SAR) in which housing-prices are affected by other prices in neighbouring regions. In (United) Changwon City, spatial effects existed in before-consolidation. Spatial effects had 44%, 36%, 35% and 26% on 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 of neighbouring regions’housing-prices respectively. But spatial effects did not exist in after-consolidation, as showed statistically no significant results.
Some researches have been studied that ignoring spatial effects when estimating housing-prices could lead to a bias in regression coefficient, but the results of (United) Changwon City differed from these studies.
Forth, the results of regional convergence can be summarized as followings;
Empirical results based on modified -convergence, Pairwise gaps tests and panel unit tests indicated that there was no evidence of convergence among housing-prices in sample period. Meanwhile, the studies that divided into before-consolidation and after-consolidation also were drawn whether had evidence of convergence in each time. As a results, there was no evidence of convergence in before-consolidation, but evidence of convergence in after-consolidation. Especially the results was found that submarket of two groups existed and there was each evidence of convergence by groups which divided by housing-prices level.
In summary, this paper indicates that as a case of (United) Changwon City administrative district consolidation seems to suggest directivity that can be different with other’s spatial structure trend, therefore urban plans of consolidation area should be established under fully understanding of spatial structure.