The Sustainable Development of Urban Cultural Heritage Gardens Based on Tourists’ Perception: A Case Study of Tokyo’s Cultural Heritage Gardens

Ge Chen,Yiping Xia,Jiaying Shi,Katsunori Furuya

doi:10.3390/su12166315

Abstract

For the cultural heritage gardens in the urban environment, modern high-rise buildings inevitably change their original landscape and form a new landscape experience with visual impact. Whether cultural heritage gardens and modern cities can coexist harmoniously is one of the critical issues to achieve their sustainable development. This research aimed to find an indicator of landscape morphology, which can predict the visitor’s cognition for such cultural landscape forms. This study surveyed tourists’ preferences in six selected cultural heritage gardens in Tokyo. We used hemispheric panoramas to calculate the view factors of certain elements of the landscape at the observation points. The results showed that Sky View Factor was a positive predictor of tourists’ preference, and this predictability did not change significantly with the attributes of tourists. We also found that tourists’ attitudes towards the high-rise buildings outside the gardens have become more tolerant and diverse. These findings could be applied to predict visitors’ perception preference of cultural heritage landscape in the context of urban renewal, contributing to the sustainable development of cultural heritage landscape and urbanization.

Highlights

Cultural heritage landscape that remains in the urban environment represents the preservation and embodiment of the historic culture and people’s wisdom of the city and the country [1]
Since the research object of this study was the cultural heritage gardens, we focused on the two conflicting objects of “buildings outside the garden” and “garden landscape”
In future policy setting for the protection and management of the cultural heritage landscape and its surrounding environment in the city, the relationship between the city and the cultural heritage landscape should be viewed from a dynamic perspective

Summary

Introduction

Cultural heritage landscape that remains in the urban environment represents the preservation and embodiment of the historic culture and people’s wisdom of the city and the country [1]. It is an attractive point for urban tourism development and an essential resource for urban economic growth [2]. The cultural heritage landscape in many cities is facing a significant threat of destruction and even gradually disappearing due to urbanization [3,4,5,6]. Nowadays, how to achieve the sustainable development of the urban heritage landscape has become a worldwide focus of attention. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the member states of the United Nations (UN) in 2015 clearly state that it is necessary to strengthen the protection and maintenance of the sustainable development of world cultural heritage and natural heritage [7]

Objectives

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion