Study on the Special Zones for Structural Reform in Urban Planning and Machidukuri

-Focused on Cases of the City Planning Law and the Building Standard Law-

Abstract

The Special Zones for Structural Reform was established in December, 2002. The local governments, private businesses sectors and citizens can propose deregulation for the special area. In this paper, the aims are to verify the effect of this system to the city planning and machizukuri analyzing contents of proposals and "Communication" between central government and local governments. The following three points can be pointed out. (1) The concrete needs of the local governments are shown. (2) It becomes clear the existence of the problem between prefectures and cities which should be no problem by the existing laws. (3) It can be pointed out to be able to use a special district system as the experimental system for "Substantial decentralization" of the power.