This paper clarifies the political power structure in various urban development projects for the revitalization of old commercial cores through the analysis of political decision-making processes. Competition between old commercial cores and railroad station areas, which is a typical feature of Japanese cities, is taken into consideration. The historical inner city of Hachioji in the Tokyo metropolitan area, which has many commercial establishments and daily railroad passengers at the station, was investigated.
People with influence in the old commercial core have demonstrated great political power in Hachioji. They positively secure their own profits by occupying the center of power in municipal politics. They can also take advantage of their strong connections with politicians and high officers of the city.
The Chamber of Commerce and Industry is established under law, which also allows it to conduct investigations and to state its opinion officially on municipal commercial policy. In Hachioji, its directors and the assembly members tend to be those with abundant networks and money because they are not chosen through universal election. The old commercial core has succeeded in holding numerous positions in the center of power and guided opinions in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Thus, the people of power in the old commercial urban core have been able to promote various projects for their area in municipal politics through the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Meanwhile, they did not favor other areas and opposed the opening of large-scale retail stores in the railroad station area, etc. Many measures for the revitalization of the old commercial core, failed to be achieved because those plans were often criticized as economically unjustified and self-serving.
In conclusion, urban development projects are influenced not only by economic but also political factors. Therefore the old commercial core maintains high priority in municipal politics with its abundant political power, even though its central role in the city's commerce is eroding. In Hachioji, however, the changing power structure caused by growing commerce in the railroad station area, suburbs, etc. began to undermine the municipal policy that focused on the old commercial core.

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Although subsistence-oriented slash-and-burn rice production is still the most important economic activity in the hilly areas of northern Laos, market-oriented activities of shifting cultivators are now becoming increasingly important. This is because the Lao government has adopted a series of policies to revitalize the market since 1986 and a cash income has become very important even in rural areas of Laos. As a result, there diversification of livelihood activities among households can be seen.
The present study tries to reveal this diversification by analyzing the relationship between subsistence-oriented shifting cultivation and market-oriented activities of each household. The research site is Number 10 Village, which is located 25 km south of Luang Prabang, the largest town in northern Laos. This is a village consisting of inhabitants living there since the 1960s and 1970s, most of whom are internal refugees from the Laotian civil war (Number 10 Villagers) and inhabitants who formerly lived in Namchan Village, which was situated at a distance from the road. In 1999, Namchan villagers relocated themselves and merged with Number 10 villagers following the government's resettlement policy (Namchan villagers). They continue practicing shifting cultivation in their former territory after the relocation as before. The number of households in this merged village is 86, 81 of whom are the Khmu, the representative shifting cultivators in Laos, and the rest are Tai lowlanders (the Lao and the Nhuane) who migrated to this village for making paddy fields and trading with the Khmu.
The conclusions are as follows. Among Number 10 villagers there seems to have been a disparity in wealth between paddy field owners and the others due to the gap in productivity between lowland and upland rice production. This disparity has increased after the appearance of new occupations since the 1990s. For example, there is rice credit with high interest rates that has created a distribution structure in which the rich gain more rice than needed for their own consumption and accumulate surpluses, while the poor dispose of much of their rice crop. In addition, the rich tend to engage in occupations with high income, which enable their higher standard of living, while the poor can only take part in occupations with low income, most of which is spent on rice because they fall into a rice shortage for many months.
Disparity in wealth in this village is, to some degree, the disparity among different ethnic groups. Tai lowlanders in this village have become rich engaging in rice credit and other commercial activities for the Khmu. This fact suggests the importance of taking into account the relationship between Tai lowlanders and shifting cultivators in considering the poverty problem of the latter in Laos.
Number 10 villagers engage in a variety of income-generating activities. Some of them specialize in these activities and decrease their dependence on shifting cultivation. On the other hand, all the Namchan villagers maintain livelihood activities that center on shifting cultivation. This is partly because population pressure in the territory of Number 10 villagers has increased while that in the territory of Namchan Village has decreased as a result of resettlement of the population from remote areas to areas along the road.

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The purpose of this study is to examine the formation and functional changes in kinship associations in Cheongju, a local city in South Korea. The formation and changes in kinship associations are closely related to rural-urban migration.
The population of South Korea became concentrated in the cities after 1960. Migrants actively formed new kinship associations in major cities, such as Seoul. Kinship associations in Cheongju have been formed since the 1970s due to a remarkable increase in the population of that city. People who achieved economic and social success in the city developed strong connections with lineage villages of Chungcheong-buk-do. Thus, kinship associations in cities grew by accepting migrants from the lineage villages. The associations helped newcomers to settle in the city because they were able to introduce jobs and places to live. Kinship associations are being reformed and reorganized in accordance with the population growth and people's demands in urban areas.

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