In Korea, many of historically important cities have been developed related with rivers. And the area formed around riverside is the most typical public space that has played its pivotal role in buildup city and culture, has had an effect on citizen's everyday lives.
However after modernization, riverfront has been developed rapidly to maximize land efficiency and development value. As a result, high density apartment and office buildings have been built, but they were only for the owner's not for citizen who just can see the riverside from far away.
Moreover the recent social changes such as urban model towards the low carbon green growth, the reactions for the climate change at the urban level and the requirements for improvement of the quality of life following the economic growth need the new paradigm about the value of river and riverfront in the urban space.
Therefore the value of riverfront in the urban space has to be reconsidered and the keynote of plan needs to be established again. So this study aim at suggesting the value of riverfront, requisites for the
good riverfront, and also the detail plan and design direction for actualization.
This study covers defining of the riverfront and analyzing the issues and implications of 12 cities in Korea and overseas. The case study got the result through map research, GIS analysis, fieldwork, and interview.
The existing related studies just focused on the river space or urban space, or the simple introduce of oversea's case, so they are short of the policy aim and barometer that riverfront needed as a public space in the city, and concerning as big urban plan or design for the urban reformation focused on the riverfront. This is the first study that suggest the so-called ' river-nomics' which concerns riverfront as a new power of reforming urban space. Therefore it has meaning that suggest the basic direction of the following study about setting the action strategy such as landscape, space structure, land use for riverfront.

Key words : riverfront, urban design, urban planning, urban regeneration, river-nomics