In the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), publicparticipation in the planning process of rural planning has recently increased its importance in the political sense, since citizen groups have become influential by taking initiatives for local plan-making. However, in West Germany, public participation in planning decision-making is limited by the principles of representative democracy. Therefore, local residents can participate in the preparatory stages of the planning process, but later decisions are to be made by their elected representatives.
This general principle can be observed in different types of planning in rural areas, of which the author gives three examples.
1. A construction management plan of municipalities
Every municipality establishes a construction management plan for its territory. This plan is to regulate land uses for construction and other purposes. The plan consists of two stages. The first stage is the preparatory land-use planning (Flachennutzungsplan, usually called F-plan) . An F-plan covers the whole area of the municipality and provides planning guidelines for different land uses. The second stage is more detailed and restrictive (Bebauungsplan, usually called B-plan) . A B-plan covers the central and residential districts of the municipality and controls land uses of private lands as well as public lands with legal power. Rural residents can take part in the preparatory stage.
2. Special-purpose planning
Planning in rural areas consists of various kinds of special-purpose planning. Every sectorial plan is prepared by a proper authority, often a governmental agency, and not by local representatives. So local citizens have fewer chances of participation in this special-purpose planning than they have in the process of municipality planning. If they have, that means often a chance to protest against the proposed plan.
3. Land consolidation planning
Land consolidation planning is one of the special-purpose planning in rural areas, which is supervised by the Land Consolidation Agency of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. Land consolidation planning has a wide implication for the benefit of rural areas ; it aims not only at the improvement of agricultural structure, but also at the improvement of infrastructure and the development of the whole region. In this case, local residents can organize participants'union, hold general meetings of the union concerning the land consolidation project and discuss issues with those in the Land Consolication Agency and other particir ting bodies.
Finally, the case of land consolidation in the State of Bayern is explained.

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“Public participation” has been widely discussed among people particularly in urban society late in the 1960's. Japanese social background in this period is recognized to be attributed to rapid population and industrial growth, centralization of power and forced capital accumulation which have raised issues such as oppositives to the controlled society, loss from the decision-making of policy and destruction of living environment and so forth.
Local municipality involves both urban and rural societies, therefore, “public participation” and establishment of municipal antonomy in rural society should be also considered to solve problems arising from the characteristics of countryside.
A pilot project in case study area at Iide-machi (town), Yamagata prefecture was implemented by public participation system called 120 members committee. But, this project was not operated satisfactorily owing to the top-down system. The municipality was composed of small self-governed area which we used to call “chiku”. So, we suggested community workshop by bottom-up system for the purpose of public participation. The community workshop was held for one week without a break with twenty residents participated.
Subjects of the workshop were :
1) Giving questionnaires to inhabitants in order to understand what they are expecting the chiku where they live and work.
2) Mapping out the problems which were diagnosed by people in the chiku.
3) Investigating questions peculiar to the chiku.
4) Making the concrete pilot project in the chiku. Schedule of the workshop was :
1st day : Taking general view of the chiku and analysis of the questionnaires given to the whole participants.
2nd day : Checking over the agriculture and land use.
3rd day : Checking over the living environment.
4th day : Checking over the shopping street.
5th day : Planning community center in the chiku.
6th day : Making objectives of future plan.
last day : Designing the pilot project.
This paper reports the process constituting a pilot project and techniques of the planning by public participation.

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In this paper, the idea and planning method of a comprehensive rural planning in rural districts will be discussed.
So as to solve agricultural and rural problems, to protect living environment of their own region and improve it, rural people should take the initiative in making a comprehensive district project and put it into practice. In order to realize this idea, there is necessity to develop planning methods suitable for the respective region.
As one example of the methods, “Kande” system is proposed. Even if there is not, among inhabitants, a capable area leader in the public eye, one will be able to play a role as an area leader in the process of creation of the planning when being supported by a local self-governing body ; agricultural co-operative association and agricultural improvement agency, and planning consultants. As a result, rural community development would be achieved by participation of the rural population for themselves.
Kande's methodology requires following three necessary conditions. First is multi-steps of decisionmaking through investigation and consensus of the plan among people in the following steps : organization for planning, formation of check-list of self-survey, and proposal of a pilot plan and a master plan by themselves. Second is to take an investigation according to the above mentioned steps. Last is to form the project team consisting of the comprehensive district planning council and supporting organization in order to carry out the measures.
Effectiveness of this “Kande” system was verified by six case studies which have been performing in the rural part of Kobe.

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The dispersive system of energy production comes before the footlights whenever a crisis of energy is concerned, but in fact, the concentrated system of energy production, which depends mainly on overseas resources, tends to expand its share. Most of the energy which is consumed for agricultural production in Japan depends on imported oil, so Japan is lacking in independence in terms of energy. We, therefore, have to aim at self-supply of energy for Japanese agriculture by actively utilizing unused resources which exists stably in Japan.
When we consider about the problem of energy, we should not think it only in respect of physical energy efficiency, it is more desirable for us to think it also in respect of economical viewpoint. In addition, we have been thinking the problems of the dispersive system fragmentalily in isolation before, that is the reason why such problems exist still today. Therefore, we have to think of the energy problems systematically and not to repeat the same failure again.
In order to realize the proposal mentioned above, we have to think of the introduction of dispersive system as a supplement system to the concentrated system, as J.W.Milon shows in his thesis.
As far as the concentrated system is concerned, enormous energy is produced constantly, and when we study the process of energy production in the portion of operating time, it is devided into three units ; base unit, intermediate unit, and peak unit. Base unit such as nuclear or coal generators has high capital costs and low variable costs. On the other hand, peak unit is intensive and has low capital costs. Then it can be said that the marginal production cost is highest at the peak unit and lowest at the base unit.
As mentioned above, if we take notice of that the marginal cost differs in the amount of production, the dispersive system would be able to supplement the concentrated system at the peak unit when a high marginal cost is inevitable. As a result of this, the production cost of the concentrated system will get lower as a whole, so we have to intend to magnify the dispersive system.
The cost decision theory of marginal cost, which began to be popular in the 1930's has been authorized recently, and was formed in a public law in the U.S.A. in 1978. So in Japan, we have to combine many of the dispersive systems based on the theory - the marginal cost becomes energy charges - and then, we should aim at reducing the marginal cost and thinking the optimum distribution of resources over a long time. The most adequate method for it is to determine the most suitable combination of the dispersive systems under limited conditions, and to make good use of the marginal cost which is determined in the fittest combination. Then we have to look for the most suitable way leading to the best, using multi-stage linear programing.

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