It is essential to consider strategies, spatial planning, and reflection of sustainability for the creation of sound urban spaces. To this end, there is a need for plans that can secure better sustainability through strategic environmental assessment (SEA) of plans. This study examined the literature and available precedent to develop a SEA model for administrative plans for urban development including metropolitan plans, urban master plans and urban management plans. In the course of development of the model, environmental issues associated with the urban plans were analyzed by classifying them into ten categories, including “spatial planning,” “conservation planning,” “greenbelt systems,” “habitats.” and etc. according to their rank. Furthermore, those issues were reflected on the development of environmental evaluation indices for the plans.
Overall and detailed environmental indices that can be applied to the administrative plans for urban development including metropolitan plans, urban master plans and urban management plans were devised for five stages: ① Establishment of development goals and strategy, ② Analysis of current status and characteristics, ③ Conceptualization of spatial structure, ④ Planning for each department, and ⑤ Execution and management. Sub plans are more detailed and concrete. Criteria based on the evaluation indices, when performing evaluations on plans based on each environmental assessment index in reference to experts and the literature, were used to forecast their effects, i.e. whether they had a positive, negative, or no effect or relationship, or whether their effects was uncertain. Based on the forecasts, this study then presents means to establish more improvable plans. Furthermore, by synthesis of the effects according to each index and integration of the process, plans were analyzed overall.
This study reflects the characteristics of the present time period based on issues in the SEA process and techniques in upper level administrative plans being newly established, and presents them according to the stage of each plan. Furthermore, by forecasting the effect of plans by stage, this study presents proposals for improvement, and in this aspect, can be meaningful in promoting plan improvements through SEA.