Streetscapes Composed with Plants Growing at Vacant House Lots

A Case Study of Main Roads in Higashiomi City

Abstract

The plants that grew on 107 lots of vacant houses in Higashiomi City were visible from the adjacent streets, and most of them were voluminous trees. Therefore, the plants contributed to formation of landscape of the streets they lined up along, by creating certain amount of green. The overgrown plants covering the vacant houses embodied a sense of worn, weathered beauty. In addition, the plants were able to be borrowed and utilized as background of the gardens in the adjacent lots. These findings implied a new way of forming streetscapes by using what already existed as it used to be, just like the manner of Japanese garden making. The methods of qualitative evaluation of the overgrown plants, the ways of pruning and maintaining them and the systems of co-management of them were to be researched.