Niseko Town enacted a town development basic ordinance in 2001. Eleven years on, the town has decided to document the steps, observations and subsequent revisions made to the ordinance during the period since enactment.

Currently in Japan there are 256 local body governments that have introduced basic ordinances-similar to the ordinance that was introduced in Niseko Town. However, even now there are widespread misunderstandings in relation to basic ordinances. In response to these misunderstandings, Niseko Town is creating a report that outlines and describes the laws, which form the base of the Niseko Town development basic ordinance.

All town regulations in this report that apply to Niseko town will be denoted as (Niseko town ordinance), references from local government basic town ordinances around Japan will also be referenced in the report, these will be referred to as (local government basic ordinance).

It is hoped that this report will become a resource for local governments around Japan who are implementing basic ordinances in the future.

In Japan, decentralization reform has progressed since 1991. The abolition of government agency proxy administration was the greatest result of the first decentralization reform term (1991-2000). Central government continues to participate in local governments but accountability and responsibility of citizens in local governments have increased dramatically. The considerable achievement of corporate self-government prepared local governments and citizens for citizen's self-government. Municipal governments have begun to settle on fundamental autonomy ordinance in the second decentralization reform term (2001-). This paper draws a conclusion based on these historical tendencies and two case studies of municipalities (Shimotsuke City and Nasushiobara City in Tochigi prefecture). Finally, this paper clarifies the present-day significance of citizens' commitment to the process of making fundamental autonomy ordinance.

Kawasaki City is one of the 20 designated cities in Japan with a population of over 1.4 million, and is the first designated city to have enacted an autonomy fundamental ordinance. Currently, Kawasaki City is promoting citizen-based city planning in line with the main purport of the “Kawasaki City Autonomy Fundamental Ordinance”, which was enacted in 2005.

Firstly, this article overviews the background toward and deliberation process of the ordinance. It then focuses on the definition of “citizen” and characteristics of the Ordinance's stipulations such as “Corporate Social Responsibility”, etc. It further focuses on the administrative situation of the public referendum system, etc., which was set up based on the Ordinance's principles of “participation” and “cooperation”.

Finally this article outlines a way forward for Kawasaki City's citizen-based autonomy as a metropolis in the new era, based on the process of cooperative projects within communities represented by “Ward Citizens' Councils”.

Minamisoma City, which has an area of 398.5 square kilometers and is located in the northern Hamadori region of Fukushima Prefecture, was founded in January 2006 through the merger of Haramachi City, Kashima Town and Odaka Town. Those municipalities share cultural traditions, such as the Soma Nomaoi Festival, held for more than 1000 years, as well the Edo period financial reconstruction, called “Houtoku Shihou.” The Abukuma Mountains, which extend for 150 km from the south of Miyagi Prefecture to the north of Ibaraki Prefecture, are located to the west of the city, providing abundant natural resources.

Minamisoma was intricately and severely damaged not only by the earthquake and tsunami of the Great East Japan Earthquake, but also by the nuclear accident occurring at Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant. Minamisoma formulated a fundamental autonomy ordinance before the earthquake struck. This paper aims to illustrate the concept of citizen autonomy in Minamisoma by comparing the ordinance with recent community planning.

Nowadays, partnerships in which the government and citizens' groups cooperate with each other and deliver public services are gathering attention as a new approach to solving social problems. One challenge is that differences in governmental and citizens' group operations make it difficult to produce better solutions and improved relationships in each planning process. Here, “partnership promoting citizens” acting between the government and citizens' groups are considered to play an important role in supporting the process. This study focuses on the use of human resource development programs comprising courses and a system in which partnership promoting citizens are integrated into the planning process. The purpose of the study is to discuss the effect of human resource development programs. In this article, firstly we describe the features of the human resource development program in State Baden-Württemberg. Secondly, we use one city in the state as an example and describe the role of partnership promoting citizens. The results show: firstly, they can learn skills for planning and intermediation from the course and can inject citizens' idea and professional skills into the planning process; secondly, the system supports issues that should not be treated by individual partnership promoting citizens; and thirdly, self-motivated partnership promoting citizens create smooth communications and build trust between citizens.

This study reveals regional differences related to the introduction of Designated Administrator System (DAS) in public facility management. The following results are based on analysis of introductory trends in cities classified by population number and centrality, using the distance measurement function of GIS. First, marked differences in enterprise designation ratios are seen between metropolitan cities and local cities, while few differences are apparent in NPO designation ratios. The enterprise designation ratio is high in metropolitan areas, compared with provincial cities. Second, municipalities in metropolitan areas have the tendency to choose companies located within a 30-kilometer radius. On the contrary, municipalities in local areas tend to choose companies located in distant metropolitan areas, especially professional service sectors that require expertise in administration. For these differences, regional conditions such as (1) lack of enterprises to provide professional services in provincial areas, (2) lack of human and financial resources for long-term management and administration of local SMEs and NPOs, and (3) prevention of local employment loss, especially in the public affairs sphere, are very critical, along with the introduction of the DAS policy for each municipality.

Installation subsidies for residential photovoltaics provided by local governments are offered all over Japan, yet optimal systems for such measures have not been given full consideration. This study is an analysis of the residential photovoltaic installation subsidy offered by the municipalities of Saitama Prefecture. The optimal subsidy unit price according to total budget restrictions was examined using demand and supply functions. The demand curve was created based on data from installation subsidies in Saitama municipalities and Web-based questionnaires.

The results recognized the existence of an optimal value of the subsidy unit price for maximizing the number of installation applicants. However, even when the subsidy unit price was low, the number of applications was not less than the number budgeted by the municipalities. It was considered desirable to set the subsidy unit price low enough that the number of applications was not less than the budgeted number.

This paper presents a discussion of how social capital (SC) influences the behavior of coastal streetcar users with regard to climate change adaptation. A community network that can solve regional issues is recognized as important for implementing climate change measures. Such a community network is quantified in terms of SC. Hakodate City, Japan, was selected as a case study. Streetcar users were selected from three areas along streetcar routes. Each area has a different SC structure: bonding type, bridging type, and hybrid type. Questionnaires were used for investigations, and 381 valid samples were gathered. Logit modeling and structural equation modeling were used as analytical methods. Results showed that SC directly influenced protective behavior. Therefore, SC is presumed as a predominant factor in climate change adaptation ability. Moreover, citizens opt for self-help behavior by using inner community networks in bonding type areas. Finally, several recommendations are made to promote climate change adaptation behavior in terms of SC.

While ensuring local mobility is one of the most effective ways to maintain and improve vitality in the area, the environment which surrounds local mobility has been continuously deteriorating due to economic recession, depopulation, and an aging society with decreasing birth rates. Conventional ways to ensure local mobility, which have depended on traffic companies and the government, have become increasing difficult. Under such circumstances, ensuring local mobility through the cooperation and coordination of various stakeholders, including the government and traffic companies, under the initiative of local residents has become a potentially successful style, especially in rural areas. This paper focusses on consensus building processes by the participation of the various stakeholders, and proposes a method of preparing a consensus building process map which will permit the abstraction of knowledge concerning the promotion of efforts based on existing cases.