This study examined people's attitudes toward various kinds of urban planning regulations, through a questionnaire survey administered to 2,993 residents in Japan. Based on the responses, land uses were classified into three types, depending on whether residents' evaluations were positive on average and varied little (parks, shopping streets, and bus stops), were positive but varied greatly (train stations), or were negative and varied little (short-term apartments, warehouses, and graves). As a reason for disliking specific land uses or facilities, many residents gave the annoyance by noise or passers-by. When residents were asked to evaluate the disliked land uses supposing that the unpleasant factors were reduced, their evaluations for schools, parks, shopping streets, hospitals, bus stops, and train stations improved, but those for garbage disposal facilities, parking lots, warehouses, amusement facilities, and graves did not. The possibility of applying performance-based regulation methods to urban residential planning is discussed.

View full abstract

Due to the tendency that there are no newly constructed houses under the current severe housing budget constraints as well as in other cities in Japan, in government ordinance city YOKOHAMA's council housing management responsibilities, one of the main challenges is to make the maximum use of the already constructed housing stocks. Concerning the council housing management, there has been the problem that there was an inedible rate of the people who decided not to enter to the houses after they got a chance after the lottery. This paper clarifies the direction and the consequence of the revision of the system of recruiting methods which was led in 2010 whose aim was to minimize the cancelation.

View full abstract

Noorderplantsoen is a historical park just north of the city center of the City of Groningen, the Netherlands. A main bicycle route runs through this park; it was created by excluding cars from the park in the 1990s. This paper examines how this route was realized in terms of public participation and political parties. The plan to exclude cars from the park had consistently been opposed not only by businesspeople but also by residents around the park. Pressed by the intra-party organization, however, the government party stuck to its election program, which had insisted on excluding cars from the park, and carried through the plan. Therefore, it is concluded that this main bicycle route was realized thanks to liberal democracy.

View full abstract

Under the population declining, the importance of regional policy to maintain living environment is recognized. There are two ways to promote regional administration: "merge" or "union" of municipalities, however, these ways have not functioned effectively particular in regional policy and planning. This study aims to clarify the significance and problems of "flexible network" to form regional governance through analysis on self-support settlement region framework policy. Three cases are analyzed to discuss the merit and problems depending on types of formation of regional governance. In conclusion, the municipalities' cooperation based on agreement produces variety of regional frameworks and projects like medical services. The leadership of central city and careful discussion with surrounding municipalities are important for self-reliant cooperation.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine propagation effect of disaster preparedness education for elementary school children, in particular focuses on district residents' perception as well as theirs intention for household-based and community-based preparedness measures. We applied questionnaire survey among 331 residents in district of Senzyu-Hutaba elementary school which conducted Model of Community Disaster Prevention School Project in Tokyo. The data analyses were including; (1) the condition of information propagation through participants' transmission about disaster preparedness education; (2) the influence of information propagation on non-participants' perception and disaster preparedness measures. Based on the results, we found out the communication about disaster preparedness is the effective way to improve community disaster prevention activity.

View full abstract

This paper derives an analytical expression of the estimation of the demand for a facility under the following conditions: (i) the behavior of facility users follows an origin-constrained spatial interaction model, and (ii) the distribution of facility users in a network space is represented by polynomials. We demonstrate that a part of integrand in the definite integral representing the estimation of the demand for a facility can be represented by the infinite series of exponential functions and that the analytical expression of the definite integral is derived based on the infinite series. We show through example calculations that the analytical expression enables us to obtain an approximation to the true value of the definite integral and that we can improve the approximation as much as we want. We also show that using the analytical expression, it is possible to obtain an approximation to the total benefit measure for facility users distributed over the network and thereby to evaluate the locations and sizes of facilities.

View full abstract

The changing patterns in the geographical distribution of residential burglaries in Tokyo from 2001 to 2011 were examined using ESDA (exploratory spatial data analysis), and the following issues were identified: (a) While the residential burglary rate has decreased in the past eleven years, the geographical distribution of burglaries has been widely dispersed. (b) The concentration of residential burglaries has been statistically significant during these eleven years. (c) Although the hotspots for residential burglaries have changed dramatically, the pattern of change has held some regularity. (d) The hotspots for residential burglaries stabilize once one area becomes a hotspot. (e) Some areas in Tokyo have been hotspots for eleven years.

View full abstract

In this paper I present the actual situation of the reconstruction for innovating the local industry. I analyzed the situation of damage and restarting their business of marine product processing industry affected by the disaster in the field within one year from the earthquake. And then, I found that industrial complex that is formed as oriented to mass production is a lot of damage in the earthquake out of this, in the circumstances it is difficult to recover. In conclusion, I revealed the social hierarchy of the key industry in Ishinomaki over long history, and on the other Hand, the innovative local structure has been formed to create new value in disaster area

View full abstract

It is well recognized the importance of physical activity such as walking for human health. This study aims to find the relationship between urban characters and physical activity levels in Japan, especially focusing on travel behavior. We analyzed it by using trip data in 40 cities from 1987 to 2005. According to our analysis, first, we showed the fundamental feature of physical activity in terms of travel mode and personal attributes. Second, it was found that physical activity levels of individuals had decreased by 20% during this period, and the result supported the idea that the urban density and also the car ownership levels in cities are related to the physical activity levels.

View full abstract

This study elicited the elements that visitors could focus on in historical districts as the aspects of the local lives by analyzing their open-ended responses about things that they thought attractive and objects through which they sensed the local lives, using a questionnaire survey. Another questionnaire survey asked the residents to rate the extracted elements in terms of the extents to which each element portrays the local lives and an intention to attract visitors. The results imply the importance of visitors' perception of the ways in which the districts are utilized. Consideration of the visitors' and residents' evaluations implies some similarities and differences between them in terms of what to consider as the aspects of the local lives. The findings here are expected to contribute to management of tourism destinations, which considers and leverages the local lives.

View full abstract

This study aims to analyze concept of the "pittoresque" in French by revealing the characters of the landscape took in the photos of Old Paris Series by Eugene Atget from the end of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. As a result, I clarified that the concept of the pittoreque by Atget was totally against the radical urban planning by Haussmann. Atget preferred the winding and the irregular streets, which contrasted to the Haussmannisme urban planning where the perspectives were important. And he also thought that the ambience of the ordinary life in the area was important and took photos of the details and the unique buildings.

View full abstract

This paper described urban formation process of the central part of Shizuoka City after two disasters in 1940 and 1945 through clarification of realities of the implementation of land-readjustment project and private reconstruction activities. Bending principles of land readjustment method, the reconstruction works began in 1940 were executed to meet nation's benefit and to realize longtime- cherished dream to have "horizontal-department store". With the cease of the War, another reconstruction work started to realize ideal urban space once dreamt during the war time reconstruction. Thus, this paper concludes that such directions, claimed in the pre-war planning as fire-resistance or architectural unification, were inherited until 1960's as being either continuously or discontinuously.

View full abstract

On March 11th, 2011, tsunami devastated the Pacific coast of north-eastern Japan. The paper aims to clarify the detail damage situation and the disaster prevention function of Igune. The target area is rural settlements in the coastal area of Iwanuma City. The following two points were mainly clarified. Firstly, Igune is mainly formed by Japanese cedar, which is not tolerant of salty environment. Igune in flooded areas died and has subsequently been cut down. Secondly, Igune reduced tsunami damage. Some reduced the impact of the tsunami damage and prevent the inflow of driftwood and debris with their east part. And others prevent the outflow of houses and household belongings with their north or west part.

View full abstract