Abstract
“Public participation” has been widely discussed among people particularly in urban society late in the 1960's. Japanese social background in this period is recognized to be attributed to rapid population and industrial growth, centralization of power and forced capital accumulation which have raised issues such as oppositives to the controlled society, loss from the decision-making of policy and destruction of living environment and so forth.
Local municipality involves both urban and rural societies, therefore, “public participation” and establishment of municipal antonomy in rural society should be also considered to solve problems arising from the characteristics of countryside.
A pilot project in case study area at Iide-machi (town), Yamagata prefecture was implemented by public participation system called 120 members committee. But, this project was not operated satisfactorily owing to the top-down system. The municipality was composed of small self-governed area which we used to call “chiku”. So, we suggested community workshop by bottom-up system for the purpose of public participation. The community workshop was held for one week without a break with twenty residents participated.
Subjects of the workshop were :
1) Giving questionnaires to inhabitants in order to understand what they are expecting the chiku where they live and work.
2) Mapping out the problems which were diagnosed by people in the chiku.
3) Investigating questions peculiar to the chiku.
4) Making the concrete pilot project in the chiku. Schedule of the workshop was :
1st day : Taking general view of the chiku and analysis of the questionnaires given to the whole participants.
2nd day : Checking over the agriculture and land use.
3rd day : Checking over the living environment.
4th day : Checking over the shopping street.
5th day : Planning community center in the chiku.
6th day : Making objectives of future plan.
last day : Designing the pilot project.
This paper reports the process constituting a pilot project and techniques of the planning by public participation.
