Revitalization of Cultural Values in Urban Landscape through Street Trees Design

The Assessment of Residents’ Perception of Possible Benefits and Challenges of Home Vertical Gardens in Kigali, Rwanda

“…Vertical gardens and living walls were discussed widely based on the application on facade, roof, and floor structures [14] to maximize the use of spaces for growing plants [15] with effects on food circulation [16], cooling of cities, and framing up in the cities [17]. From a wide perspective, not only the green aspects of landscape design include benefits for users [18,19] but also the buildings benefit from green spaces such as decreased temperatures, improved cooling, and reduced albedo effect [5,20]. In addition, some studies listed other aspects of the benefits of green and natural elements on social interaction, wellbeing, and community quality [21,22].…”

“…For example, Miller [23] revealed that rich green areas could reduce the level of social disturbance and increase resiliency in unexpected situations in cities [24]. Nonetheless, a major part of the studies took place in developed countries [18,25].…”

“…While the major parts of the studies took place in the formal landscapes in recent years that were registered in terms of public spaces such as parks, open spaces, and natural resources [21], the evidence showed that informal and small green spaces such as vertical gardens, kitchen gardens, decorative plants, follower boxes [26], and native plants [27] include benefits for social interactions even in temporal forms [4]. As a piece of evidence, Tafahomi [18] highlighted that both private and public landscapes contribute to the urban temperature and cooling of the buildings in three different layers, including green spaces in courtyards, trees in liner forms alongside streets to provide shading for buildings, and the climber vines and shrubs to cover walls.…”

“…While the development of urban landscapes was recommended widely by urban development documents [28][29][30], the implementation and application in small scales, particularly households, faced challenges due to the absence of clear guidelines [18,31]. In fact, on the one hand, the development of urban landscapes failed due to the low level of knowledge about arboriculture to reduce the urban landscape into wood trees [32][33][34].…”

“…In fact, on the one hand, the development of urban landscapes failed due to the low level of knowledge about arboriculture to reduce the urban landscape into wood trees [32][33][34]. On the other hand, the small-scale gardens have been integrated into the ethno-botanical aspects of society [18] and socio-ecological interaction along the time [35], which resulted in gaps between inhabitants and natural environment [12] that have reduced gardens globally in a household scale. This problem of the application of landscape on a household scale was mentioned in terms of "cultural landscape" [36].…”