Akihiko Ono has challenged relating each site to its local community. Ono aims to enhance continuity with the community by providing open public spaces for the community and by revitalizing the forests and nature that remains on the site. One of his favorite pastimes as a child was to graze on the path from school to home. He has his original childhood experience of spending one or two hours on his way home from school, which was less than a kilometer away, picking flowers along the greenway, sucking nectar from the flowers, basking in the sun, and playing hide-and-seek with friends. After junior high school, whenever he learned about various social issues such as poverty and urban problems in the world, he wondered if there was any way he could work to help people , and that is when he came across books on environmental issues such as “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson.

He thought, “If we solve environmental problems, maybe we can save 6 billion people (the Earth's population at that time)?” He entered the world of landscape architecture to generate spaces that would solve environmental problems.