The Right to Urban Streams: Quantitative Comparisons of Stakeholder Perceptions in Defining Adaptive Stream Restoration

Abstract

Assuring healthy streams in the urban environment is a major goal for restoration scientists, urban planners, and city practitioners around the globe. In South Korea, many urban stream restoration efforts are designed to provide safe water to society and enhance ecological functions. We examined the extent to which the individual interests and different values of multiple stakeholders were considered in previous decision-making in two urban stream restoration projects. The relevant data on stream restoration were collected through the nominal group technique (NGT) and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for the two stream cases of a populated inland area and a coastal region in South Korea. The AHP results provide information about the comparative weights of the values of ecological restoration (priority score: 0.487), social restoration (priority score: 0.231), and landscape revitalization (priority score: 0.279) of the Ahn-Yang stream and ecological restoration (priority score: 0.527), social restoration (priority score: 0.182), and landscape revitalization (priority score: 0.290) of the Sahn-Jee stream. The stakeholders of the populated metropolitan area had a relatively high awareness of their role in environmental restoration, thus it was natural for them to place a high value on social restoration.