Research on the Declining and the Characteristic of Local Cities

Abstract

Recently, the declining has become an issue in many local cities of Japan. Although the Downtown Revitalization Law was enforced in July, 1998 and the master plan was designed in many cities, it seems that effective measures are still in the dark. In this paper, 91 local cities in Japan are broken into types by the character and the situation of declining, and its solution is examined for each type with referring Western countries examples. Cities are broken into four types: "an independent city","a dependence city"" a low-growth city", and "a low dense city". Traffic policies such as TDM and a public traffic policy are examined as an activation measure.