This design project was initiated by the request of Ulsan Nam-gu Office as a project of Government 3.0 Design. The initial goal was to suggest design solutions to turn Samho village into a tourist area by utilizing the emigrant birds as the tourist resource. However, there were other urgent problems. Being designated as a river protection area and having power-line tower, Samho village has been excluded from the development plan. Thus, the habitants were demanding the solutions to improve their living environment and quality of life more than tourism development. Moreover, while the local government valued the emigrant birds, they were a pet peeve for the residents because they harm the village environment with their droppings. Accordingly, we expanded our project scope to include the problems relevant to the residents’ welfare as well as the tourism development.
The design process started with desk research on the habits of and damages from emigrant birds, and successful cases of fair tourism villages and contents. We collected the secondary data relevant to Samho village such as civil complaints and local resources as well. To verify and complement the findings from the desk research, we surveyed and interviewed with the residents of Samho village. We asked the about the perceived charm and problems of Samho village. From the interviews, we could find that poor communication between local government and the residents, and among the residents was the root cause of the other problems. Thus, in a participatory design workshop involving diverse stakeholders and village habitants, we generated ideas for enhancing the communication as well as building a fair tourism village. As the outcome, we suggested 30 ideas for tourism, communication, facilities, parking, welfare and damages from birds. The details of this project are available at http://desis.unist.ac.kr/?page_id=516 (in Korean).