Recycling-oriented Society and Urban-rural Sustainability in Asian Mega-cities

Abstract

Urban-rural land-use mixture is a common phenomenon in the fringe areas of Asian large cities. Although the current spatial planning system in various cities attempts to separate urban from rural land uses, the land-use mixture is expected to have advantages in many phases, particularly in bio-resource utilization. Referring to the cases of Japan, Thailand and China, we discuss the hierarchical structure of biomass flows and urban-rural land uses. We suggest that the Asian land-use mixture has high potential for bio-resource utilization, thereby contributing to urban-rural sustainability in Asian cities.