# Vacant House Characteristics by Use Area and Their Application to Sustainable Community
## 3 Materials and Methods  
The spatial scope of this study is Jinju-si, Gyeongsangnam-do. Jinju-si is currently experiencing an urban hollowing-out and old downtown decline from large-scale outward development spurred by the creation of an innovative city and a new station area. The 2020 survey data reported 11,436 vacant houses in Gyeongsangnam-do, 1180 (about 10%) of which are in Jinju-si. Jinju-si has the second highest number of empty houses in Gyeongsangnam-do after Goseong-gun with 1394 houses (about 12%). Additionally, the recent creation of an innovative city has caused the old downtown area's population to decrease and the number of vacant houses to increase. With more people moving to the innovative city, the outflow from the old city has accelerated. This study analyzed the vacant house address data surveyed by Jinju-si officials. Based on the second field survey, the data included physical environment, individual building, demographic, and geographic characteristics.  
The study spanned from 2019 to 2021. Three field surveys of the condition of empty houses were conducted based on the Jinju-si data collected in 2019. The first, second, and third survey were conducted in 8-23 May 2020, 3-27 September 2020, and 8-21 July 2021, respectively.  
As shown in Table 1 (Appendix A), the survey identified 580 vacant houses in the urban area, the center of Jinju-si, and 600 vacant houses in the non-urban area outside the city. We conducted a vacancy density analysis to establish the study's scope, as shown in Figure 1. Even within the urban area of Jinju-si, 45 to 134 or more vacant houses were concentrated in the old downtown area, with high concentrations of empty houses in Cheonjeon-dong (178, about 15.1%), Sangbong-dong (111, about 9.4%), Jungang-dong (80, about 6.8%), and Seongbuk-dong (41, about 3.5%). Therefore, this study analyzed the characteristics of empty houses in Cheonjeon-dong, Seongbuk-dong, Jungang-dong, and Sangbong-dong, which are old downtown areas.  
Figure 1: Status of vacant houses in Jinju-si’s old downtown area.  
We divided the target site use area into residential and commercial, extracted the number of vacant houses, analyzed factors affecting vacant house occurrence, and prepared vacant house measures by region.  
This study (1) identified the vacant house distribution within the site and investigated its current status, (2) established the analysis methods and variables, and (3) analyzed vacant house occurrences and regional characteristics. To this end, factors influencing the occurrence of empty houses were analyzed through literature review, field status survey, and geographic information system (GIS) analysis. IBM SPSS Statistics (v.28) and Process Macro for SPSS (4.0) were used for analyses. The study process details are shown in Figure 2.  
For Step I, we used GIS to confirm the general status of Jinju-si and the distribution of vacant houses. In addition, the general characteristics of vacant houses in residential and commercial areas were derived through the on-site surveys of four buildings in old Jinju-si downtown. For Step II, we established both the cause of vacant houses as a variable through the review of previous studies and an analysis method. For Step III, we analyzed the characteristics of vacant house occurrences in residential and commercial areas and drew conclusions. Finally, for Step IV, we derived the utilization plans for vacant houses by type, based on vacant house factors.