Masatake Kawaguchi

<p>In this study, we will understand the actual situation of street trees maintenance management systems in local governments in Japan and the development status of street trees maintenance management plans and management guidelines. Next, this study was to understand the current state of the street trees maintenance management system and its impact, and to investigate the problems of citizen's participation in street trees maintenance management. As a result, street trees maintenance work is mainly done in the civil engineering road sector. In large local governments, staff specializes in landscaping, while in small local governments, it's mainly civil engineering. In addition, most street trees management methods are outsourced by contractors, with less than half direct management by staff. The policy to maintain street trees is positioned in many local government green master plans. Since 2015, local governments have developed conservation plans for street trees and are working on sound conservation. Since the 2000s, local governments have been working on maintenance management systems with the participation of residents. Most of them are road beautification activities based on adaptive systems. In the future, the challenge will be to further expand the system and raise citizen's interest and value perception.</p>

<p>This study aims to discuss the psychological process how the evaluation and perception of residential area or neighborhood parks were connected with the formation of attachment to residential area through neighborhood parks. Concretely, the structural equation modeling was conducted based on the results of questionnaire surveys for the residents in new town. In addition, this study targeted two areas with different resident's activities, "Suzaku area" and "Sakyo area" in new town where the site of "Basic Parks for Community Use" is planned because the relationship between "evaluation and perception of residential area or neighborhood parks" and "attachment to residential area" is discussed limited to the park. As a result, the following findings were obtained; 1) in both areas, "attachment to residential area" is influenced "attachment to neighborhood parks." And, the positive "evaluation of neighborhood park environment" and "involvement through participation into neighborhood park activities" encourages "attachment to residential area" through "evaluation of residential environment," "involvement through participation into residential activities" and "attachment to neighborhood parks." 2) The difference is revealed that "attachment to residential area" and "attachment to neighborhood parks" have influence on each other only in "Suzaku area" which residents pursue activities.</p>

In this study, we ascertained roadside residents' awareness of the area and its street trees based on the questionnaire for the residents in order to analyze the structure of factors influencing their commitment to the maintenance of street trees, using covariance structure analysis. The results revealed that awareness of "perception of the value of street trees" increases simultaneously with awareness of "perception of the value of the area"; thus, both have a strong, positive mutual influence. The structure is clarified as one whereby "commitment to the maintenance of street trees" is strongly influenced by "perception of the value of street trees," whereas "awareness of the problem of street trees" is not strongly influenced by "perception of the value of street trees." "Evaluation awareness of the management situation of street trees" and "recognition of the function served by street trees"are strongly influenced by "perception of the value of street trees."

We analyzed the relation between citizens’ demands and the spatial-environmental factors of street trees in Higashiosaka City and found three important points. In residential districts, street trees must be maintained to ensure that their shapes and sizes complement the residential environment. In residential–commercial mixed districts, street trees must be systematically maintained for ensuring good visibility with consideration to large vehicles and cleaning of the fallen leaves and spraying insecticides with consideration to pedestrians. In residential–industrial mixed districts, shrubs must be maintained to ensure good visibility in spatially and environmentally limited planting spaces.

Many citizen’s demands on roadside trees make unplanned prunes and a change for the worse landscape. In this study we analyzed a citizen's demands on maintaining roadside trees in Higashiosaka City. To use a method of analysis on administrative operations, we utilize a text data of citizen's demands on maintaining roadside trees that Higashiosaka City government has, and use simple text mining tool. As a result of analysis, we have showed that text mining tool can grasp relations between various citizen's demands visually, and extracted important words and clusters. And as a result of classification of administrative responses, we have confirmed a germinations of public-private partnership and potentials of reflection to maintenance plan of roadside trees.