Abstract
Dispersed housing areas had been effective in maintaining adequate rural road networks prior to the introduction of land consolidation projects.
As more and more farm households have found it necessary to use vehicles, they have in turn demanded better roads for the rural areas. The municipal governments in these areas are making all-out efforts to improve the road networks on behalf of the people.
In order to find the best way to rationalize the road networks in dispersed housing areas, we made a comparative case study on methods of road improvement between two cities Tonami and Oyabe, in Toyama prefecture which are typical dispersed housing areas in Japan.
In the case of Oyabe, to satisfy the demands of the inhabitants the city paved all the farm roads by without broadening them. As a resut of this, the roads were not wide enough to allow for the clearing of snow, nor were they wide enough so that vehicles could pass each other.The paving of the roads help farmers better mechanized their farms, but road maintenance became very costly for the local gevernment.Tonami, on the other hand, took a more futuristic approach, not only paving their trunk roads but widening them as well.Therefore, the amount of roads which they were able to pave and widen was small in comparison to Oyabe's, but in the longrun this method will be better able to satisfy the demands of the inhabitants using them.
The differences in the way in which the roads were improved upon was the result of the way in which they are to be used.
