Industrial Parks, Dispersed Industry and the Encroachment of Rural Settlement Space: An Industrial Effect-Zone Analysis of 1232 Townships in South Korea

초록

Korean local governments promote industrial parks as a response to depopulation, yet their effect on existing rural settlement space remains unmeasured. Transferring the road-effect-zone framework to industry, we separated industrial occupation, the exposure of settlement land (residential land and farmland) within 100 m of industry, and the contiguity reduction (a scenario measure: shrinkage of the largest contiguous settlement patch when settlement land within that zone is excluded, not actual loss) in 1232 townships of 121 non-capital counties. Unlike roads, industry rarely subdivided settlement space; it encroached on it. In 2025 the median park township had 2.0% of settlement land exposed, against 0.4% elsewhere, and a contiguity reduction of 2.1%, against 0.2%; it was 20% or more in 10.1% of park townships, against 2.9%. Per percentage point of township area, industry dispersed outside park boundaries was associated with a 4.6-point contiguity reduction, whereas industry within parks showed no detectable association. In 2000-2007, half of new industrial land replaced settlement land. Of 116 county ordinances retrieved and reviewed, only three set a distance for factories in general, against 100 for solar power facilities. Park-related industrialisation is associated with spatial encroachment on existing settlement that population or employment outcomes alone do not capture.

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