Since Oita city was nominated as a New Industrial city, its population had been increased and many suburban residential districts were developed. These neighborhoods in the suburbs of Oita city are now experiencing the generational transition: The second generation people come the age of leaving home, whereas the first generation people are aging. The purpose of this paper is to examine the process of generational transition in suburban neighborhoods in Oita city, and then to forecast the future of the neighborhoods based on the behavior of the second generation and the expectation of the first generation to it. The first generation residents formed a male breadwinner female homemaker nuclear family which was typical in suburban neighborhoods, however, it is a characteristics of the respondents that the male first generation moved to Oita city owing to the relocation within an organization, rather than finding a new job. Most of the first generation respondents hope to stay living in the present house. The locations of the neighborhoods are convenient to buy daily foods and goods for those who can drive a car. For those who cannot drive a car, they are rather isolated site because the public transportation is poor. As the first generation are aging, some of the residents face the difficulty to meet the basic need of daily life. Most of the second generation of respondents live apart from the parents even if they live in Oita city. It cannot be anticipated much that the second generation succeed and live in the parents houses, because half of them have already obtained owner-occupied houses. The possible outcome is that the neighborhoods will face the depopulation in the long run. Higher social status of the first generation was succeeded to the second generation and the second generation living in Oita city tend to choose their residents in the western part of the city where white-collar residents have been clustering. This fact indicates that the occupational segregation of the city will be sustained by the people's residential preference.

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There are questions being raised over the safety of imported farm produce and concealment of its provenance, and there is heightened demand for domestically produced food. With public consciousness connecting these issues with the recovery and rejuvenation of production areas within Japan, the plunge in imports from the US and increase in beef price have been a focus of attention. Against this background, the reality of the growth in recent years of cattle farming areas and the problem of sustainable development was investigated. Below are the results of the investigation, using the town of Takachiho, in Miyazaki prefecture as a case study. Firstly, Takachiho had a long-term decline in the number of cattle, but this turned around in the second half of the 1990s and the number started to increase. The reason was due to concerted action of the neighborhood municipality and local agricultural cooperative started in 1998, aimed at increasing the number of cattle by expanding the scale of full-time farmer's operations and by getting older farmers to delay retirement from farming, and it was also found that the increase in Japanese beef prices since 2002 did generate interest in scale expansions of farms. Secondly, based on analysis of the management of farms in areas that experienced marked increases in the number of cattle, the following five points became clear. 1. The rearing scale of a professional farmer's operation where there was a successor to take over from them was over 20 head of cattle, and it was about 10 head on farms with middleaged semi-professional farmers. Only in farms run by elderly farmers were there four or fewer head of cattle. Thus, in general, the scale of a farm was determined by the working ability of the operator. 2. The majority of farmers had experience of doing a second job, with particularly many involved in the forestry and construction industries. 3. While larger scale farms have more crop land, including leased land, and produce animal fodder, mid-sized farms have a combination of businesses, producing shitake mushrooms or vegetables. 4. The focus of the activities to increase the numbers of cattle were the full-time farmers who had successors for their operation. However, while there were also cases of small-scale part-time farmers also increasing the number of cattle raised, saying their motivation was that "it contributes to activities", a sense of community also contributed to the increase in cattle numbers. 5. Despite the fact that in the second half of 2008 the price of Japanese beef fell, farmers with about 10 head of cattle are currently strongly interested in increasing their herd. Further, obstacles to continuous development were found to include the decline in Japanese beef market prices, reduced part-time work opportunities, and a lack of funds for expansion of management. In order to ameliorate these problems, the agricultural cooperative started work on expansion of a feedlot and started on the creation of a common pasture, in order to support the market price for Japanese beef and promote low cost operation. Nurturing mid-scale farmers will be the key going forwards, and, in order to implement this policy, financial assistance for expanding livestock barns is anticipated.

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In this paper, the author examines interaction of users and self-organizing process of their communities in a virtual space "Second Life". Hakata SIM and Niseko SIM were focused as case studies. The major findings are as follows. Most users of the SIMs don't live in the city, which is reproduced in the SIMs, in real space. They dwell or visit some SIMs with interest in a brand of the city and pleasure in the SIM. The users who enjoy virtual life actively play roles of hubs in the social network, and they enhance the value of the SIM through creation of image or music, programming, virtual performance of song or dance. Then, owners facilitate or coordinate skills, know-how and social network the users have, and actualize many virtual events in the SIMs. But the events are held only in the SIMs and the SIMs oriented collaborations in real space are not observed. In Niseko SIM, the owner plays an important role in creation of landscape and social norm. And many users of Niseko SIM can enjoy their virtual life comfortably in the milieu the owner directs. Through comparison of users of the two SIMs and American users, characteristics in use of Second Life by Japanese were found. First, Japanese communities are isolated from global communities in Second Life. Second, American users often produce new business in real space from experimental creation in Second Life on one hand, Japanese users enjoy creation as a pleasure only in Second Life on the other hand. Third, most Japanese users enjoy experiences given by the owner, so the owner play an important role in creation of landscape, social norm and pleasure for users.

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Because of the limited availability of arable land and the heavy population pressure in China, the government has enforced agricultural policies such as the cultivation of grasslands, domiciliation, combined agro-pastoral land use, and household production responsibility system to resolve the problem of food shortage and promote sustainable development in inland China. The pastoral region of the semiarid zone in Inner Mongolia, however, witnessed environmental deterioration in the form of desertification due to the expansion of cultivated land, excessive firewood consumption, and overgrazing. Hence, the government implemented environmental policies such as the prohibition of pasturage and the so-called ecological migration since the beginning of the twenty-first century to prevent desertification and further environmental deterioration. At the same time, urbanization has rapidly advanced in Inner Mongolia due to resource development and industrialization, which not only led to the expansion of the existing urban area but also resulted in the growth of small towns in rural regions. While numerous studies on the environmental changes in Inner Mongolia after the post-1978 reforms have been done, little is known about the regional differences with regard to the land use in the whole of Inner Mongolia after 2000. This study aims to clarify the regional differences with regard to the land use change in relation to the environmental policies and urbanization between 2000 and 2005. The author conducts a quantitative analysis of the data concerning the area of land use types for each county in 2000 and 2005 calculated by the Inner Mongolia Land Survey Institute based on the satellite image analysis. In analyzing the distribution of land use types, factor analysis is applied to the data matrix of the percentages of land use types with 178 (89 counties by 2 time periods) rows and 9 (land use types) columns. To grasp the changes of land use types, the author analyzes the difference of factor scores for each county between the two time periods. Four factors with an Eigen value of 1.0 or higher is extracted and a varimax rotation is applied to these factors. These factors can be labeled as "farmland", "urban land use", "woodland vs. grassland", and "degraded land", respectively. By applying cluster analysis to the factor scores, the counties are classified into five types of the regions: urbanized area, agro-pastoral region, grasslands, forests, and degraded land. Little change in the distribution of these types regions between 2000 and 2005 is observed. Nevertheless, difference of factor scores in each county between two time periods reveals the regional variations of land use change within Inner Mongolia. Increase in the scores for Factor 1 that represents the expansion of farmland show that agriculture has spread from agro-pastoral region to semi-arid region. Increase in the scores for Factor 2 concerning urban land use indicates that urbanization has advanced in the cities in the drainage area of the Yellow River and other industrial cities. Positive scores for Factor 3 indicating increase woodlands and decrease grasslands are found in the eastern and southern part of the study area, which reflects the farmland afforestation policy. The decrease in the scores for Factor 4 appears in the periphery of the Keerqinzuoyizhong desert and Ordos plateau, which indicates that desertification has settled down. On the other hand, increase in the scores for Factor 4 in the drainage basin of the Yellow River shows that desertification and soil alkalization supposedly caused by irrigation or draught hazard have taken place there. As shown in this paper, the effect of the recent transition of government policy can be observed in land use changes. In addition, the result of this study shows that major cities and their surroundings are influenced by urbanization.

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