Abstract
This paper examines consensus-building at Kawagoe city in Saitama prefecture and reviews the adoption of Machidukuri-kihan by Kura-no-kai, a non-profit organization. Kura is a traditional Japanese building that is mainly used for storage. There are many Kuras in Ichiban-gai, the main street of Kawagoe. The Kura-no-kai is comprised of the storeowners of Ichiban-gai. Machidukuri-kihan is the town-building rule based on Pattern-language which was developed by C.Alexander, and he was influenced by the ideas of the linguist N.Chomsky. The book by C.Alexander is very popular in the field of town-building.
The preservation of a historical district is very difficult because the right of possession and property is complicated. This study considers the role of Machidukuri-kihan. Previous studies on this issue were published by Dr. Okazaki and Dr. Harashina. Characteristics of and hinderance factors for consensus-building include repulsion for legal restrictions, improvements made to the amenities and campaigns against laying power lines underground. Machidukuri-kihan has been adopted as a design code for the Ichiban-gai and has proven to be a good code.
JEL Classification: R5, R28, R58
