Sustainable Development of Rurality-Based Ecotourism in Outer Urban Fringe of Tokyo; a Case Study of the Totoro Forest

Abstract

　This paper focuses on rural land use and its conservation as a reflection of rurality in the outer urban fringes, and discusses re-creating rurality and utilizing it in conservation and ecotourism activities. In the Sayama Hill district of the Tokyo metropolitan area, rural land use has been restructured and rurality has been recreated through conservation and ecotourism activities in the Totoro Forest. Although rural and urban residents have different perspectives on those activities and their participation in them, their interests in rurality are cooperative in the conservation of rural landscapes. Actually, a relationship between rural and urban residents has been developed through collaborative control and maintenance of the Totoro Forest, which is one of the central establishments for the re-creation of rurality. In the framework of the relationship between rurality and urbanity, mutual relationships among elements of urbanity have been connected with those of rurality through the Totoro Forest as a rural and urban establishment. I conclude that rural residents feel sentimentality for rurality and the religion of rural life as the spirituality of rural spaces in the Totoro Forest, and urban residents feel enjoyment of rural recreation and rurality-based ecotourism as a yearning for green spaces and the natural environment.