2015 Volume 71 Issue 5 Pages I_281-I_292
Recently in Japan, “Landscape Improvement” in the public works projects attracts more attention and discussion than before.
On the other hand, demand for reduction of public investment is also serious, and therefore, clear explanation for necessity and validness of “added investment” for such landscapical or aesthetic matters is highly required. However, a method to evaluate the outcomes or benefits brought about by such a landscape improvement has not been established, which makes it difficult to discuss how to approach the landscape improvements and to build a consensus.
Toward resolving these issues, we are now conducting research on how landscape improvements affect the communities and their economics. And in 2014, we proposed the draft Model described the sequence of events that were expected to be induced by such landscape improvements.
This paper aims mainly to investigate the validity of the Model, through the survey of the cases of past performed landscape improvement projects in Japan.
The survey was carried out in a questionnaire to the officers of local governments according to the location of the cases. Majority of the cases were selected from the award winning landscape improvement projects. In the questionnaire, we questioned about the existence of the 28 phenomena that were considered as a possible effect of landscape improvement, based on the draft proposal mentioned before.
Using the result of the questionnaire, we made analyses on the effect of landscape improvements and the results confirmed the validity of that draft proposal. Also, we reviewed on the adequate indexes for evaluating the effect of landscape improvement based on the analysis results. And the indexes such as “increases of visitors and changes in their behavior” and “increases of willing persons to move in the community (or continuation of residency)” were found to be notable indexes.
