Gwangju Seo-gu, What Is the No.1 'SsoGood News' Chosen by Residents?

School, Church, and Apartment 'Parking Lot Sharing Project'
2,509 Residents Participate... Selected as Top 10 News

Residents of Seo-gu, Gwangju City (District Mayor Kim I-gang) selected the parking lot sharing project as the number one ‘2024 SoGood News’ for highly practical, everyday life policies.

Seo-gu announced on the 17th that it conducted a survey on 15 exemplary cases of proactive administration, innovation, and collaboration from the 9th to the 15th of this month on the Seo-gu Office website, with 2,509 residents participating over one week to select the top 10 news items.

School Parking Lot Sharing Declaration Ceremony. Provided by Seo-gu

The number one ‘SoGood News’ chosen by Seo-gu residents is the parking lot sharing project involving schools, churches, and apartments to alleviate severe parking shortages. To solve the representative daily civil complaint of parking issues, the district has opened 1,900 parking spaces at schools, apartments, and religious facilities for shared use. This approach has received great support for improving efficiency compared to building parking lots with huge budgets and time, and in March, it achieved first place nationwide among autonomous districts in the Ministry of the Interior and Safety’s ‘Public Resource Opening and Sharing Service’ performance evaluation.

Following this, the projects ranked 2nd to 5th in the ‘SoGood News’ are: ‘Cheonwon Guksi’ (Thousand-Won Noodles), which achieves a triple effect of job creation, domestic wheat consumption, and regional coexistence; ‘Baro Munja Harangkke’ (Direct Text Message Service), which resolves civil complaints within 48 hours with a single text message; ‘Manbal-ui Seongji’ (Barefoot Sanctuary), which created barefoot roads in 18 neighborhoods and established itself as the first urban barefoot festival in the Honam region; and ‘Urban Parks,’ where residents enjoy rest, healing, performances, and picnics.

Additionally, the ‘SoGood News’ includes the nation’s first introduction of the ‘Family Care Youth Allowance’ and its benchmarking by the government; the ‘Seo-gu Type Integrated Care,’ which has become a new milestone in Korean welfare; the declaration of the urban brand ‘Good City Seo-gu,’ embodying values of trust, sharing, and companionship; the ‘Top 100 Local Alley Restaurants’ discovered through proactive administration; and the ‘Good Store Good Coupon’ project, which supports neighbors in need of care and induces virtuous circulation in the alley economy.

This is interpreted as a result of reflecting residents’ desires to enjoy small but certain happiness (sohwakhaeng) in policies. The district is focusing administrative capabilities on developing public-private cooperation models and welfare policies that stay ahead to realize a community without welfare gaps and a community happy all year round, while actively promoting customized policies to revitalize small business owners and the alley economy.

District Mayor Kim I-gang said, “Administrative innovation and change are not just slogans but are being implemented as policies that closely communicate with residents on the ground and change their lives,” adding, “We will concentrate our administrative capabilities even more on realizing ‘Good City Seo-gu,’ where kind and warm-hearted Seo-gu residents are happy and successful.”

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