A study of the maintenance and management scheme for provisional open spaces

Abstract

In general, planners have conceptualized open spaces as permanent fixtures of the urban landscape. At present, however, the number of provisional open spaces--sites such as vacant lots that can be utilized temporarily--is rapidly increasing. In response to the proliferation of provisional open spaces, the city of Kashiwa, a commuter town east of Tokyo in Chiba Prefecture, established the kashiniwa scheme in 2010. This scheme aims to utilize provisional open spaces as sites for activities by citizen groups. This study identified the characteristics of kashiniwa and the problems in the advanced citizen activity supported by kashiniwa through document analysis and group interviews. An important characteristic of the kashiniwa scheme is that Kashiwa city supports citizen groups by offering subsidies without any strict regulation of group activities, permitting groups to develop various distinct and innovative activities, such as agriculture, not seen in more conventional parks and green spaces. However, issues of soil preparation for agro-activities and insufficient consensus building were identified as key problems. This study concludes that kashiniwa has potential to make provisional open spaces more attractive, if solutions to the problems identified in this study can be identified.