‘Natural Air Purifier’ Pleasant Urban Forest Enhances Quality of Life for Pohang Citizens!

‘Lungs of the City’, Climate Change Response, Fine Dust Reduction, and Heat Island Mitigation Effects Increase

Various Healing and Rest Spaces, Urban Forests... Greatly Loved by Pohang Citizens

Pohang City is making every effort to continuously create urban forests, which have significant effects on reducing fine dust and mitigating heat waves, thereby increasing the quality of life for citizens by expanding pleasant and healthy spaces.

According to the National Institute of Forest Science, an urban forest of 1 hectare composed of 10-year-old trees absorbs 6.9 tons of carbon dioxide annually and plays a significant role in reducing fine dust and greenhouse gases.

Various functions of urban forests, including 'fine dust filters'.
[Image source=Korea Forest Service]

Additionally, urban forests that block direct sunlight lower the average daytime temperature in the city center by about 3 to 7 degrees Celsius, alleviating the heat island effect and gaining attention as a ‘natural air purifier’ and ‘air conditioner.’

Pohang City deeply recognizes the importance of urban forests, which have various effects such as carbon reduction in the era of climate change, and has proactively created ‘healing space’ urban forests that promote citizens’ health and psychological stability through activities like walking and barefoot walking.

As a result, using the Pohang Railway Forest, the core of the 9.3 km-long Central Greenway Project, as the ‘main artery,’ the city is expanding its green network by creating various urban forests and school forests throughout the city, including Haedo Urban Forest, Batmeori Village (Lifelong Learning Center) Cultural Forest, Songdo Pine Forest Urban Forest, and Buk-gu Office Urban Forest.

These urban forests function as the ‘lungs of the city’ and are greatly loved by citizens as spaces for healing and relaxation, continuously attracting visitors.

In particular, the city is actively promoting the ‘20 Million Trees Life Tree Planting Campaign,’ which plants 2 million trees annually for 10 years (2017?2026). From 2017 to the first half of this year, about 17.69 million trees have been planted, exceeding the target by 126%, achieving remarkable results with 671,160 square meters of green space and urban forests newly created, equivalent to 94 soccer fields.

Furthermore, Pohang City has four urban forests?the Pohang Railway Forest, Haedo Urban Forest, Batmeori Village Cultural Forest, and Yeonil Neighborhood Park?that have been approved by the Ministry of Environment for the ‘Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading’ external projects, the most among local governments nationwide. Through this, the city is leading the realization of carbon neutrality and presenting a new urban model for securing climate change response capabilities.

This year, the city has newly expanded 10 hectares of green spaces in the city, including 6 hectares of climate response urban forests such as the buffer green space in Sangdo-dong and 4 hectares of ‘Child Safety Green Forests’ (creating street forests to separate sidewalks and roads) that also function as safe school routes.

Going forward, Pohang City plans to further increase urban forests that provide pleasant eco-friendly resting spaces around living areas, in addition to carbon neutrality and fine dust reduction functions, including new cultural and resting spaces with improved accessibility such as the ‘Railway Forest Citizen Plaza’ and the ‘Yeonil Yugang Barrier-Free Urban Forest’ for pedestrians with mobility difficulties.

Mayor Lee Kang-deok said, “Urban forests are key spaces for citizens’ health and urban ecosystems, playing an important role in providing a clean and pleasant environment for future generations. We will do our best to continuously expand urban forests close to living areas to enhance citizens’ happiness.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.