In order for multinational corporations to maintain sustainable operations in the 21st century, they must cooperate with a wide variety of stakeholders in the global arena. The global financial crisis of 2008-2009 clearly shrank the scale of innovative industries and the consumption in the global network of economies as well as in major global cities throughout the world. Although manufacturers are expected to restore the global economy, a regional network effect may develop throughout industries. This paper explains the network effect based on the stakeholder theory founded by the author (2004), and proposes an index method to analyze the network effect by illustrating the economic and social performance of urban areas in the Tokyo Metropolitan area.

Economic globalization has been altering urban systems laid within regions in advanced countries. It creates two poles in the population distribution of the urban system: a large city and many small ones. Making use of the theories of fragmentation of production processes and retailers' market areas, this paper firstly elucidates the mechanism in which location change of major economic facilities due to expanding economic activity beyond a country's borders divides cities that comprise the urban system into the two parts. Secondly, this paper shows, using a simple empirical analysis, that the structure of the urban system influences a region's production and social performance. While the urban system, where the primary city dominates the urban population distribution, reveals positive economic results, its social welfare level is not so high when compared with its economic achievement. The result of this examination suggests that revitalization of the secondary cities in urban systems is significant to raising the level of national social welfare.

Today, 50 percent of the world's population lives in urban areas. This ratio is expected to reach 70 percent in 2050. This will result in massive carbon dioxide emissions from urban areas. Many people in urban areas, especially in developing countries, will be unable to receive sufficient medical treatment, and they will suffer water shortages. Advanced technologies, such as ICT and energy technology, are indispensable in solving these problems. In recent years, the “smart city”, where advanced technologies play a vital role in realizing efficient city infrastructure, environment-friendly lifestyles and improvement in the quality of life, is attracting much attention. Needless to say, most advanced technologies are developed by private companies across the globe. Therefore, urban development will increasingly depend on these private companies in the future. The role of “the private sector in the public realm” will expand. A dialog between companies and residents is required in order to apply advanced technologies from companies with excellent R&D capabilities, enabling increased efficiency in city infrastructures and improvements in the quality of city life. However, since residents are not aware of how much influence such advanced technologies have on their daily life, this dialog has not yet been firmly established. Therefore, government or local government administrators need to mediate between residents and companies and promote the beneficial use of advanced technologies from private companies for urban development.

TAMA Association, which has been a model case of the industrial cluster policy of Japan, is an organization established by the firms, universities, industrial associations, local governments and individuals in the western part of Tokyo Metropolitan area, which is called as TAMA (Technology Advanced Metropolitan Area), for promoting university-industry linkages and inter-firm linkages. Key elements of the Association's mechanism to form the linkages, and thereby create innovations, are the absorptive capacity of “product-developing SMEs” and the intermediary function of the Association itself. Main points of the recent and expected future developments of the TAMA cluster initiative are a closer alliance of the local governments with their increased involvement, formation of an innovation platform for the large global enterprises, further development of the university-industry linkages through exchange of human resources between universities and firms, and enhancement of international activities.

The urban economy of 21^st century Japan has been rapidly globalized, and cities that have been strongly affected by that globalization are experiencing instability in civic life. The reasons for such destabilization are an aging and tangibly decreasing population. Some urban areas are experiencing regional problems. One major regional problem is the “marginal community”; a phenomenon in which a particular area has a high ratio of elderly inhabitants and retails stores have all but disappeared. In this situation, it is very difficult for inhabitants to lead a sustainable urban life. Alternatives and voluntary measures have been proposed as solutions to this issue. One proposal promotes local cooperative convenience stores managed by inhabitants of the community. This method was originated in Okinawa and has been implemented in some rural areas already. This paper suggests that the local cooperative convenience store plays an important role for solving the urban-related problem of marginal communities.

The River Law, revised in 1997, provides that a plan of river improvement work for the next 20 to 30 years should be made for each Rank 1 river system by hearing the opinions of scholars, local residents and local governments. But, such opinions, especially those of local residents, are highly varied and sometimes contradicting, and a compromise among the residents is necessary before considering their participation in the planning. This paper discusses the present condition and the future possibility of a process to reach compromise among local parties of differing opinions in the meeting of watershed councils, which are organized by river administration bureaus to hear such opinions. Analyzing speaker sequence in the records of five watershed councils, the authors point out the five factors most important to uncover potential disputes and encourage compromise activities: (1) Advance specification of disputable subjects and fair nomination of committee members for discussing the subjects: (2) Encouraging discussion among concerned parties and controlling excessive verbal input by council secretariat: (3) Quantitative examination on disputable subjects by third parties to prepare the foundation of discussion: (4) Introduction of citizens' opinions presented in public hearings to the council: (5) Temporary participation of concerned parties, which were not included at the beginning of discussions, as needed for discussing a subject.

Is the recent interest among Diet members concerning the National Land Development Plan converging on transportation facility construction? This is the critical query of this study.

In this study, the relevance of the National Land Development Plan and transportation facilities was analyzed through the content of Diet minutes. The results are as follows: a) It may be said that the relevance of a National Land Development Plan and transportation facilities has risen in remarks made in the Diet after 2000, b) Similar such phenomena occurred twice in recent history-once in the first half of the 1970's and once in the latter half of the 1980's. There are two main differences between these two instances and remarks made since 2000. Firstly, the two instances in the past occurred when interest in the National Land Development Plan was high; the current phenomenon, on the other hand, has occurred when such interest is low. Secondly, the two instances in the past inferred that transportation depended on the National Land Development Plan; adversely, the current National Land Development Plan has come to depend on transportation facility construction.

The answer to the opening question is “yes” and leads us to determine that the comprehensiveness of the National Land Development Plan has decreased.

This study focuses on Fukui Prefecture, a typical suburban city area where energy consumption has been sharply rising. It assesses current CO₂ emissions in the region by residents' attributes and gauges their intent to adopt a low-carbon lifestyle, thereby clarifying differences by attribute, forecasting emission levels for 2020, and examining the potential for reductions. It is projected that by 2020, domestic-sector CO₂ emissions in Fukui Prefecture will, compared to 2005, rise by 10.7 percent in the passenger-vehicle category and decline by 1.3 percent in the household category, for a net increase of 3.7 percent. As a questionnaire administered to residents of three prefectures in the Hokuriku region reveals, the range of low-carbon lifestyles sought by residents is considerable; although needs differ by sex, age, and household type. Intent to adopt the compact urban lifestyle promoted by local governments is high among young males and elderly females. It is predicted that the widespread adoption of low-carbon lifestyles will make it possible to reduce CO₂ emissions by 6.7 percent compared to original forecasts under a realistic scenario, or by 17.1 percent maximum.

Big cities have been pursuing collaborative policies with local municipalities that include agricultural areas to solve the various problems that arise due to the super high density of the city, such as lack of space, appropriate natural environment and/or agricultural/industrial manufacturing sites. For example, many municipalities in Tokyo have kept their own rural bases, which are facilities approximately 100-200 kilometers away from the municipality, to let their public elementary and junior high school pupils experience life in a natural environment as well as agricultural procedures, etc. However, recent policy needs, mainly caused by declining birthrates, aging population, difficulty in budget management, and global environmental problems, demand a change in the previous style of collaboration. Nakano City, one of the most highly populated municipalities in Japan, has been trying to cope with such demands. This paper deals with such trends based on the policy needs of the highly populated city, focusing on the Nakano Urban-Rural Cooperation Project, to examine and develop desirable solutions of similar problems in the near future.