Citizens' Hands to Restore Urban Greenery: The Setagaya Trust Association and the Rise of the Urban National Trust, March 1996

Citizens' Hands to Restore Urban Greenery: The Setagaya Trust Association and the Rise of the Urban National Trust, March 1996
In Japan in the 1990s, the National Trust movement expanded from the protection of nature in rural areas to the restoration of the urban environment. The Setagaya Trust Association, established in Setagaya, Tokyo, is a symbol of this movement, which established a mechanism for citizens and the government to work together to protect sloping forests, compound forests, and other green spaces in cities under high development pressure. After the collapse of the bubble economy, "value as a living environment" became more important than the economic value of land, and green spaces were reevaluated as cultural assets of the community. The activities of the association promoted conservation through donations and volunteers, and the government provided support in the form of "green democracy. The spread of the "sustainable development" philosophy after the Earth Summit in 1992, and the enactment of the Basic Environment Law and the Basic Environment Plan as policies, also provided a ta
ilwind. This urban National Trust developed from a movement to "protect nature" to a movement to "regenerate the city," and demonstrated a new form of self-governance in which local communities design their own environment.