A system for a wide-area regional planning was introduced following the establishment of the National Spatial Planning Law in 2005. This resulted in the establishment of an institutional base that enables for the formulation of a new national land structure that incorporates a two level system in developing Japan's national land plan from a national level and a wide-area bloc level.

Meanwhile, the National Land Planning Council, responsible for the conducting of studies and deliberations on the national spatial plan from a nation wide perspective, declared that as a future model of a new national planning, the realignment of a new national land structure should be conducted by pushing forward the formation of an autonomous and diverse wide-area bloc.

By examining the policy discussions related to the objective and the development of the wide-area bloc approach, this paper hopes to contribute to the efforts by relevant institutions involved in the development of an autonomous wide-area strategy, which has become the central theme of national and regional land planning policy in recent years.

The frequency analysis for the keywords used in national development plans is conducted to trace the changes of the plans and to clarify the relationship between the plans and their times. Although the management of a national plan, which means basically to apply PDCA cycle, has been well performed, the bureaucracy disturbed checking a previous plan to find out inadequate parts of the plan. Finally, populations and areas in DID are analyzed to conclude that urban policies should be identified to make diffused urban area more comfortable, effective and efficient.

Aiming to revive the throughly divastated areas of the whole country, in 1950 after the fifth year from the end of the Second World War, National Land Development Act was enacted. However, embodying the aim of the act in the form of plan logged over twelve years later 1962, the Natonal Laved Development Plan as a guidepost for guidig regional or locol economies was formulated.

In 1974, National Land Use Act, that included such a catch phrase as “spatilly balanced development of the country”, which soon became a convenient pretext for every regional and local-governments and interested groups to acquire various kinds of subsidies.

In 1989, in tha midst of inflationary waves of land prices, Basic National Land Act was enacted to check detrimental effects of rising prices by coordinating public interests with private interests.

Following the three acts, five national land devalopment plans, which in fact were only roughly quantitative guideposts were formulated.

In my opinion those acts and plans were some fair but empty declamations because of lacking the efficient power of implementing the plans or guideposts.

Firstly, population movements among localities were belittled, while more 6 million persons, namelg 5% of total population, every year move to another places.

Secondly, adequate and efficient land use zoning is wanting. japanesec communities at various levels lack the stern concept of eminent domain or land expropriation rights for public use, so that better land use is very difficult to attain good urban and rural scapes. In addition to that cadastral survey proceeds very slow, namely onlg a holf of the area to be covered is survayed till now. Promotion of the survey is keenly needed.

Thirdly, integrating physical ond economic planning is needed too, for civil engineering could contribute to construct good looking as well as convenient residenticl and working places.

Finally, it should be recognized that everything depends upon people's conseiences to attain hedonically better communities.

A term of “Country Management by New Public (CMNP)” is shown in the New General Planning of Country Formation (Kokudo Keisei Keikaku) in the report of the Japanese government even though this new plan does not decide formally yet. Here CMNP is given as a specific message that the government would not be a main player for public but the local community should be a main player for public in the future of Japan. Of course, such as idea may be indispensable in the early stage of Twenty First Century in Japan, but it is also true that Japan has never experienced against such as intention. In Japan, There has been a dominant thinking for years that nation should be responsible only for public or the public areas. Therefore, it is not always easy for Japan to understand and to accept the new idea such as CMNP. How can Japan do then? I would like to recommend to study or to learn Community Economic Development (CED) Initiatives in EU as a precedent example. Here CED is quite based on the theory of Social Capital like Robert Putman and so on. CED does not aim to get each nation's own profits but also to close up individual people as losers of globalization which includes, for example, single parent issue and social exclusion issue and so on. Really it is the significance of Public in CED based on Social Capital. Saying by other words, it is based on the Interregional thought. On the contrary, CMNP still lacks of ideas how to remake the fundamental local community in Japan. The local community in Japan has been rapidly falling worse than before. Braking through of this situation, I pointed out something as important issues. In particular, we have to recognize that it is necessary to embody the democratic way of new types into local community such as Community Building. They are narrow paths toward to Achievement of CMNP.

For a decade or so after the collapse of the bubble economy, Japanese society has been facing with social and economic decline of regional areas in the difficulties of inevitable decrease of national population and continuing excessive influx into Tokyo Metropolitan area. To cope with these subjects and to realize more independent regions in local areas, it is indispensable to shift Japanese governance system from the present one to more decentralized and autonomous one and to establish a real decentralized state which is composed of effective central government and autonomously independent local governments, in addition to promoting polycentric national land policy.

In this context, some cases in EU countries on wider-area local governmental systems which embrace highly empowered mezzo-governments will give us good implication. And it is the time to form a road map to introduce a Japanese-type wider-area local governmental system, making strong appeal to the public for better understanding and approval.

First, this paper reviews the current trends in the arguments on spatial strategic planning as well as on regional development from an international perspective, particularly from the viewpoint of European countries where a number of discussions are recently being held in response to the emerging regionalism after the unification of EU and the advent of globalization. The discussions center on the formation of city regions, agglomeration economies, regional governance, and the rise of spatial strategic planning. The situation in the United States and Asian countries are also referred to in the discussions. Based on the discussions on these international trends, this paper attempts to identify the critical issues influencing the future directions of strategic spatial planning in Japan. These critical issues are outlined by the following needs: (1) review the regions where regional strategic plans need to be formulated, (2) strengthen the roles and functions of land use planning in order to induce better results from spatial strategic planning, and (3) establish regional governance and develop deliberative democracy on a regional scale.

The health care system of our country is now standing in the crossroads of the fate. The shortage of medical doctors in hospitals has been occurring by the national level after the introduction of the new postgraduate training system for medical doctors from 2004. Emergency health care system cannot be maintained especially due to the shortage of medical doctors in regional center hospitals. Moreover, it is a very severe situation that the discontinuation of medical service in regional hospitals is not avoided in the department of internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, and pediatrics, etc. This situation is called as ‘the collapse of regional medical service’. The majority of the hospitals which face to such difficult situation are municipality hospitals that have been bearing the community health care until now. Among them, several municipality hospitals were driven in to the close due to the shortage of medical doctors. As it is exactly critical situation, the establishment and the execution of the community health care by the local government should be performed.

In this report, several issues are summarized from the latest trend for the reproduction of the community health care system, one of the most basic, public infrastructures. Those are as follows; the reasons why an unprecedented situation of such collapse of regional medical service occurs, what exists in the background, and what will be preformed for the reproduction of community health care system in the future.

This paper considers an optimal water environmental policy for the sustainable management of the basin of lake Kasumigaura and to improve the water quality of the lake. To evaluate the effects of the integrated lake basin management (ILBM) policy from the financial and environmental viewpoints, we build a regional model linked with socioeconomic and water environmental systems and derive an optimal solution with or without the ILBM policy by dynamic system simulation. Structural models of the target basin are specified, which describe socioeconomic activity and material flow balance, and the objective function is defined as a minimization problem with respect to the emission of the water pollutant (total nitrogen; T-N). We assume that the organization responsible for the implementation of the ILBM policy can collect the funds from municipalities in the basin and utilize the resources to seamlessly improve the water environment in the catchment area of lake Kasumigaura across cities, towns, and villages. The feasibility of the policy can be evaluated by system simulation.

This paper conducts a simulation to estimate the administrative investment necessary for maintaining the infrastructure stocks of present-day Japan.

The infrastructure that was analyzed comprised four fields-roads, water services, drainage, and trash disposal facilities. The following three kinds of analyses were simulated.

First, the amount of administrative investment necessary to maintain the infrastructure stocks of present-day Japan was estimated. Second, by taking into account the change in the future population of Japan, the administrative investment necessary to maintain infrastructure stocks per capita was estimated. Finally, the administrative investment necessary to introduce Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and maintain the infrastructure stock of present-day Japan was estimated.

An amount greater than the current administrative investment is necessary for the maintenance of the drainage and trash disposal facilities at their current levels. Therefore, the maintenance of infrastructure stocks is regarded as a problem of paramount importance.

The land use management for city-regions has difficulty in the coordination of interests despite the recent legislation pertaining to land use management by central and local governments. This paper discusses the formation of local governance in Japan in terms of the coordination among local governments and various stakeholders, focusing on the deliberation process of Division in City Planning Area and the land use management by ordinances through case studies. We concluded as follows: 1) The shift “from government to governance” could be observed from the fact that stakeholders' opinion was incorporated through public comment or workshop in the deliberation process, 2) New civil organizations for regional development have been organized through the deliberation process, while the partnership among civil, business and governmental sectors were insufficient, and 3) The city-region land use management needed the institutional support for intergovernmental coordination.