Abstract
The article discusses the linkage between urban planning system and housing policy in Japan. As one can imagine easily,
there has been close linkages between them, like housing and urban infrastructure development in the era of urbanization,
promotion of housing supply during the term of extreme rise of land price in metropolitan centers or utilization of existing
real estate stocks like vacant houses in present days. However, there seems to be less linkage in some fields on which close
collaboration is supposed to be essential. While densification of built-up areas, which is now often called as “compact city
policy”, has been one of the most important issues in the field of urban planning, housing theories policies doesn’t show
enough criteria to evaluate better housing conditions following to the transition of people’s preferences. On the other hand,
urban planning system hasn’t shown interest to so-called housing poor, which seem to become varied in recent decade. To
strengthen the linkage between them, both system and policy should share the recognition of contemporary problems and
desired direction, before considering practical ways of collaboration between them.
