STUDY ON THE MAINTENANCE OF ROAD SCENERY IN NISHIHARA VILLAGE

Abstract

 The maintenance and management of the local landscape is in danger due to the weakening of local communities and the lack of local leaders. The purpose of this study is to clarify the local rules of road landscape conservation system and operation in Nishihara Village, Kumamoto Prefecture, together with the actual situation of conservation activities by local communities. Specifically, we interviewed each village about the "Road Competition", a community activity to mutually evaluate the local road landscape, and extracted and analyzed the local rules for road cleaning and community management. As a result of the study, it was found that in Nishihara Village, road cleaning for the road competition has become the basis of village management, and also contributed to the development of local residents' civic pride by functioning as the basis of two types of social capital, leading to the formation of a sense of cooperation and the strengthening of the village community.