Abstract
Identification of the unique local vision is important work in the planning process of the municipal concept plan in rural area. However, many planners in charge of the plan-making are apt to be at a loss how to develop the most appropriate vision for their object municipalities. One of the major reasons why the visionsetting process is thought to be such a difficult task is because the appropriate methodology does not establish yet. Actually, it depends on“intuition and experience”of the planner in most cases. The appropriate modeling technique together with the scenario planning must be developed.
In this paper, the author paid attention to the Kane's Simulation (KSIM) method as the modeling technique for scenario planning and closely examined its usefulness of the KSIM model. Firstly I considered the requirements of the desirable modeling technique for such purpose especially in rural area and pointed out the following requirements. Those are (1) flexibility that the user could easily include the local characteristics into the model, (2) interactive modeling style, (3) simplicity and easiness of the procedures, (4) robustness for long-term forecast and (5) qualitative interpretation of the model outputs. Secondly, I showed basic characteristics of the KSIM method. I compared them with the above requirements and made clear the potentiality of the KSIM methold. Thirdly, I pointed out some problems in applying the KSIM method. These problems need to be examined so that this modeling technique diffuses as a planning technique at practical level. I proposed some technical countermeasures to settle down such problems.
Fourthly, I applied the KSIM method to a depopulated municipality located in mountain area. The casestudy area intended to revitalize itself through promotion of rural tourism. I preliminarily evaluated some policies that the municipality was trying to implement.
