Paper short abstract:

Preserving open or natural space such as wildlife habitats and spaces where children can play is a very important issue nowadays in urban areas. Thus, we have been designing landscape even in urban areas, based on vernacular design. We would like to discuss urban nature, design and participation.

Paper long abstract:

Preserving open or natural space such as wildlife habitats and spaces where children can play is a very important issue nowadays in urban areas. Additionally, "Children's Play" is an important experience in learning about the structure of nature whilst "Environmental Education" has been afforded much greater importance in primary and secondary school education. Forman (1995) discussed 'habitat fragmentation' and how it occurs naturally as well as being a result of human activity.

A lack of outdoor space to play in, fear of violence in public spaces, the longer working hours of parents and the artificial nature of most playgrounds, have helped create the present-day situation in which young children have gradually lost contact with nature. For these reasons, we have been designing landscape even in urban areas, based on vernacular design (ecology, regional culture and so on) for the past decade. Also the aim of these projects is to create an area for preserving biodiversity, children's play and ecological education that can simultaneously form part of an ecological network in an urban area. Additionally, we would like to discuss how to plan and manage the existing open spaces from a landscape planner's point of view, focusing on the methods used to plan it; the planning process as a whole; and how the children and local residents participated in this process.

It is thus vital that present‐day planners and landscape designers consider "landscape" as an "Omniscape" (Numata 1996; Arakawa, 1999; Ito et al. 2016) in which it is much more important to think of landscape planning as a "learnscape", embracing not only the joy of seeing, but stimulating a more holistic way of using body and senses for learning. Thus it is very important to monitor how children and teachers are using urban greenery, then landscape designers/ planners can flexibly adopt the plan for the place according to their needs. Consequently, we would like to continue these projects as long as possible and raise children with the experience of nature in their childhood, which will create more diverse cultures and biodiversity even in urban areas.