A New Park Adjacent to SFC | Tomohiro Ichinose, Dean of the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies
2021.10.12
Are you all aware that a park is being built adjacent to SFC? It is called Endo Sasakuboyato Park (a tentative name for now) and is being developed behind the buildings of the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care and the Graduate School of Health Management. Construction is expected to be mostly complete by the end of fiscal year 2021, with the park scheduled to open in the latter half of fiscal year 2022. With the COVID-19 pandemic keeping both students and faculty away from campus since the end of fiscal year 2019, many of you may not have noticed. In fact, students and faculty belonging to the Faculty of Policy Management, the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, and the Graduate School of Media and Governance rarely visit this area anyway. When I take students there for my classes, most of them say they never knew such a place existed.
Endo Sasakuboyato, where this park is located, is one of the three major *yato* remaining in Fujisawa City. A *yato* is a long, narrow valley-like landform created by the erosion of hills, and is also called a *yatsu*. In Chigasaki City, there is a place name, Shimizuyato, where the single character for valley (谷) is read as *yato*. *Yato* are a common landform throughout the Kanto region, where the low-lying valley floors have been used as rice paddies and the slopes on either side as coppice forests. In Endo Sasakuboyato, cultivation had been abandoned long before SFC was established, but rice was once grown there. This combination of rice paddies and slope forests forms what is known as a *satoyama* environment, a treasure trove of familiar wildlife. Endo Sasakuboyato has become an important hub supporting the biodiversity of Fujisawa City. The new park is being developed in one corner of this area. It seems to be designed to allow citizens to get closer to greenery and water while respecting the rich natural environment.
This park has a particularly important function for SFC: flood prevention. The intersection with the bus terminal in front of Keio University is where three valleys converge. The Koide River, which flows west from Endo Sasakuboyato, past Shonan Keiku Hospital, and along the border of Fujisawa and Chigasaki cities, has a low flow capacity. During torrential downpours, it cannot drain rainwater sufficiently, sometimes causing the entire intersection to flood. During a heavy rainstorm several years ago, the post office suffered flood damage, and its ATMs were out of service for several months. The new park also has the function of temporarily storing rainwater from Endo Sasakuboyato. In other words, it is a park that also helps prevent floods. While it may not be able to handle every torrential downpour, it will reduce the risk of flooding compared to before. In recent years, such infrastructure has been called "green infrastructure" and is considered a new type of infrastructure that utilizes the power of nature.
I have written this far as if I do it all the time, but I became the Dean of the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies on October 1, and this is my first "Okashira Diary" entry. Under the guise of introducing the park, I have slyly promoted the theme of my research group.