The up-close experience of perennial landscapes has been shown to enhance residents’ perception of naturalness in the context of increasing small-scale vegetation landscapes. This study explored how formal aesthetic characteristics were related to landscape perception and whether landscape preference correlated with eye movements. We created a series of photomontages showing perennial combinations that contained different plant forms, degrees of species richness, and plant arrangements and recorded 73 participants’ eye movements during 10 s of free viewing in Experiment A and task-oriented viewing in Experiment B and ratings of landscape preference collected through rating scales. We found that the effects of plant form and species richness were significant for gaze behavior, while arrangement showed no significant effect. We also found that landscape preference was positively correlated with fixation count but negatively correlated with mean fixation duration and total fixation duration. Additionally, women had more but shorter fixations than men while viewing these photomontages, and the difference in aesthetic preferences between men and women was not significant. Concerning the different professional background groups, no significant gaze behavior difference between professionals and nonprofessionals was detected, but compared with professionals, nonprofessionals tended to give strongly higher preference ratings. The outcomes shed light on the influence of formal aesthetic characteristics on gaze behavior and advanced the application of eye-tracking technology in perennial landscape studies. Our findings also confirmed the efficiency of vegetation landscapes designed based on public preferences for providing restoration from stress or fatigue.

Once confined to mourning and burial, urban cemeteries are now being reimagined as multifunctional public spaces integrated into everyday urban life. Responding to this evolving role, this study investigates how metropolitan cemeteries in Tokyo are used, perceived, and socially negotiated. Although institutional initiatives have promoted the integration of cemeteries into green infrastructure, empirical research on user behavior, perception, and willingness remains limited—particularly in East Asian contexts. To address this gap, the study combines unstructured user-generated data (Google Maps reviews and images) with structured questionnaire responses to examine behavioral patterns, emotional responses, perceived landscape elements, and behavioral intentions across both urban and suburban cemeteries. Findings reveal that non-commemorative uses—ranging from nature appreciation and cultural engagement to recreational walking—are common in urban cemeteries and are closely associated with positive sentiment and seasonal perception. Factor analysis identifies two dimensions of behavioral intention—active and passive engagement—and reveals group-level differences: commemorative visitors show greater inclination toward active engagement, whereas multi-purpose visitors tend toward passive forms. Urban cemeteries are more frequently associated with non-commemorative behaviors and higher willingness to engage than suburban sites. These results underscore the role of cultural norms, prior experience, and spatial typology in shaping cemetery use, and offer practical insights for managing cemeteries as inclusive and culturally meaningful components of the urban landscape.

Urban cemeteries are essential yet spatially durable forms of civic infrastructure that increasingly accommodate ecological, cultural, heritage, and public-space functions alongside burial and mourning. This scoping review examines urban cemeteries as contested land-use systems in which infrastructural, environmental, and socio-cultural claims intersect and compete. A Web of Science search supplemented by citation tracking identified 112 peer-reviewed studies published during January 2010–April 2026. The literature was organized across three analytical domains—infrastructure and governance, environment and ecology, and society and culture—and synthesized in terms of planning tensions and responses. The findings reveal recurring tensions between burial capacity and perpetuity, ecological potential and environmental or managerial constraints, and expanded public use and expectations of solemnity, cultural recognition, and memorial continuity. Planning and management responses operate at the grave/plot, cemetery-site, and urban-system levels, while issues of cultural recognition and institutional coordination cut across these scales. Mitigation interventions often redistribute pressures among functions and spatial levels rather than fully resolving them. Therefore, their feasibility and transferability depend on locally specific legal, institutional, environmental, and cultural conditions. This review provides a planning-oriented framework for understanding cemetery adaptation as the negotiation of interconnected land-use tensions rather than the optimization of a single function.