Land utilization confusion in agricultural villages has been grasped mainly as a management problem of agricultural land, thus countermeasures have been formulated mostly from this perspective. However, it is conceivable that no adjustment of the village land base is largely responsible for the confusion that hampers rezoning land into land for housing in agricultural villages.
Consequently, planning and adjustment for expanding the rural settlement area with reference to previous settlement becomes important. The present study evaluates rural settlement area expansion planning using the Kamo area of Gifu Prefecture settlement expansion as an index. There are three village expansion types: Expansion within the settlement area, expansion around the settlement area, and expansion in the settlement area of scattered houses.
1. The trend for village expansion was analyzed to predict a future trend in rezoning land for housing on the basis of previous village expansion and classifing land utilization from the management state of included agricultural land.
2. The inhabitant's intention regarding rural settlement adjustment was analyzed. Their major concerns were the demand for land for housing, content of the rural settlement adjustment and the way agriculture land around the settlement area should be used.
3. A study was made of rural settlement area locating planning for each village expansion type, taking into consideration 2 and 3 above.
4. Conclusion (1) It is desirable that expanding rural settlement areas be planned around the settlement area irrespective of the village expansion type.
(2) Plans for expanding rural settlement areas have problems such as competition between urban and agricultural utilization of land, changes in the village formation and the like. For the former problem, land adjustment based on mutual consent among inhabitants concerning the village land utilization plan and formation of the order of land utilization should be made. For the latter problem, the formation of a separate new community in the village may be necessary according to the circumstances.
(3) Expanding the rural settlement area is classified into the development type and adjustment type. As to adjustment type, the land adjustment scheme is especially important since it makes possible utilization of land for agriculture and housing.

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Recently, it has become widely recognized that, besides timber production, forests play an important role in maintaining and enhancing the quality of the environment. This is particularly true in urbanized and suburbanized area where greenery has rapidly diminished. Proposed in this paper is a new notion and method of evaluating such functions of forests. The functions fall into four major categories, such as 1) creating a superior landscape, 2) providing recreational places, 3) preserving historical sites and traditional events, 4) stabilizing ecological condition and mitigating environmental impacts.
The proposed method of evaluating the above functions consists of the following five steps.
1) Organize the structure of functions that forests and forest lands upgrade or fulfill amenity.
2) Select sample areas and collect data connecting with the forests and surrounding area.
3) Design and conduct questionnaire survey.
4) Analyze the results of residents' respondents.
5) Formulate indices by means of multiple regression analysis.
According to the above procedure, the questionnaire survey was carried out in Kanagawa prefecture as a typical test area where the urbanization advances extensively into surrounding forest zone. The sample size was 12, 000 (75sample for 160points each), and answers actually employed was 27.5% (3433 sheets).
The proposed index system is formulated based on the result of the questionnaire. This was done through correlating the “subjective” evaluation on the forests by the residents with the “objective” parameters on demographic, geographic, and ecological condition by means of the multiple regression analysis.
Prior to the analysis, the differences in the respondents among the studied areas were investigated. From this results, it was found that the whole area would be divided into three sub areas with respects to the level of urbanization.
The developed index system, which emphasizes the value of forests from the aspects of environmental conservation, will be an effective tool in planning and managing forests, particularly those which are to be endangered by urbanization.

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The purpose of this reserch is to grasp the problems and service area of the rural park observed from use of children. For the purpose, we investigated in Hikata, Chiba prefecture. The results are summarized as follows;
The next five items are important matters on the problem of the rural park observed from use of children.
1. The problem of distance between children's dwelling place and the rural park.
2. The safety on the access against automotive traffic.
3. The problem on the change of topography.
4. The problem on the kind of play equipment.
5. The problem on the management.
In regard to the service area of the rural park, we grasped as follows, 1) the service area varies with age difference 2) the service area of the rural park is larger than the service area of children's playlot in urban area. (infants; about 300m. the lower grades of elementary school; approximately 400m, the higher grades elementary school; approximately 850m)

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