January 2020
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110 Reads
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3 Citations
Journal of Architecture and Planning (Transactions of AIJ)
In response to Japan’s aging society and shrinking population, there is a need to strengthen local relationships between people in daily life. Previous research shows that edible landscape (EL) creates communication and connections among people. However, it is difficult to develop EL in public spaces in Japan because of the concerns regarding privatization of public spaces. Authors group established the EDIBLE WAY (EW) project aimed at contributing to people's communication and creating a social network for local resilience. This paper is a practical study aimed at the following: 1) clarify what kind of communication would occur between people on the streets as a result of EW intervention. 2) To estimate the benefits and issues EW produce for local people. We choose Matsudo city as the project site. It is one of the commuter towns for people working in Tokyo, and also is an aging, shrinking, and isolated society, a typical example in current Japan. Action Research (AR) was used in this study. EW as AR consists of three phases (Table 1). We developed the method of EW as one of the way to create EL on street in Japan through AR interactive process. We collected the qualitative data from students (participatory observation), EW participants (interviews) in a form of reflexive notes after weekly and monthly activity. In the 1st phase, we visited local residents and interviewed them if they were interested in EL. We also planned the EW project details: design logo, management, etc. In the 2nd phase, we placed planter bags with vegetables in private spaces along the street in collaboration with 7 local participants in September 2016. The number of participants gradually increased to 23 due to communication on the street and connections between neighbors (Fig. 4, Table 4). At the end of the 2nd phase, we conducted questionnaire research to 189 residents in the area (Table2, 3, Fig. 5). 51.8% of the respondents enjoyed watching the growing vegetables. 32.4% said that they enjoyed walking along the road (Fig. 7). About 80% of the respondents evaluated that EW contributes to local issues regarding "local greening", "connection with local people", "landscape improvement", and "lack of communication" (Fig. 9). At the time of the questionnaire, we sent invitations, and 18 new people joined EW project from the 3rd phase. In the 3rd phase, there were 47 participants in total, and more than 100 planters were installed (Fig. 5, Table 4). We started collaboration with other community groups like community garden. The following points became clear through AR: ① Communication emerges spontaneously while people are engaged in gardening activities and because EW planters with distinctive project logo placed along the street attract people’s attention. The communication on streets occurred in a form of question about project, greeting, conversation, and sharing harvests with not only neighbors but also unknown passers-by. ② EW method contributed to activating communication, community enhancement, local landscape, local food, and environmental education. As of April 2020, the EW method has been expanded to 9 locations around Tokyo, managed by other groups. Currently, the challenge is to develop an easy to reproduce and sustain - a more effective method to conduct EW in other areas.