In recent years, increasing in the average life span is continuing in Japan, and this situation has led to prolongation of older age. So, it is important to the period to be able to spend happily in prolonged rest of one's life. For the well-being of the elderly people, enhancement in "essential activities" such as shopping and hospital visit and "leisure activities" such as sports and hobbies is thought to be important. Furthermore, the environment that is easy to movement for carry out various activities is thought to be also important. In this study, we measured subjective well-being of elderly by using a subjective well-being scale, and revealed how "essential activities" and "leisure activities" and "ease of movement" related to well-being of elderly people.

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This paper analyzes the attitudes of the municipalities toward the city master plan. It firstly overlooks the relation between the institution of the city master plan and the population, the scale of the city planning area, etc., in Kyushu region. Then, it conducted a questionnaire survey over the municipalities without the plans, to analyze their attitudes toward the plan. The major findings are, for the small municipalities, 1) the priority and necessity of the city master plan is not high and such municipalities do not have obstacles to conduct city planning project, 2) the revision of the city planning projects and the municipal mergers may become the important opportunity of the plan institution, 3) the role of the city master plan should be reconsidered for such municipalities.

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In recent years, freight transport by motor vehicles has been increasing rapidly. It has caused energy problems and global warming issues. Therefore, a modal shift to rail and ship is required. However, it is difficult because these modes cannot meet recent demand for freight transport, such as multi- frequency. So we built a nationwide freight network data, setting detailed service of Freight Shinkansen(bullet train), modeled the selection of transport, and evaluated benefits to determine its usefulness. As a result, we clarified that Freight Shinkansen between Shinagawa and Shinosaka reduced about 253 thousand tons of cargo transportation by motor vehicles. The total cargo volume of Freight Shinkansen was about 270 thousand tons, and the cost benefit ratio was 1.805. In conclusion, Freight Shinkansen can be considered socially beneficial.

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This paper aims to consider the roles of institution for promoting urban-rural interchange in depopulated area, through a case study of "Nabekura Kogen Mori-no-ie" in Iiyama City, Nagano. We interview with the manager of "Mori-no-ie", residents in surrounding villages, settlers and visitors. The roles of "Mori-no-ie" are summarized into the following 7 aspects: from the viewpoint of intermediary function between urban and rural area, 1) restructuring and marketing attractiveness of local resources, 2) a salon for provision of information and consultation about migration, 3) the base of visitor's activities and mechanism of promoting exchange, 4) the space for leisure activity, and from the viewpoint of community-supporting function, 5) networking of conservation and utilization of local resources, 6) cooperation and support for local industry, and 7) life watching and succession of the life culture of the villages.

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This study aims to identify essential features and issues of small-scale comparative urban monitoring in Germany (German: Stadtmonitoring). The analysis is based on a comprehensive literature review, interviews in four large German cities (Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, and Cologne), and a case study in Hamburg as an advanced case. The main findings are as follows: 1) In the face of growing socio-spatial differentiation and the unequal distribution of some social groups, small-scale comparative urban monitoring is now required in large German cities. 2) An understanding of the methodological constraints and importance of communication in civil society and municipal governments is necessary for effective policies.

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The ball games regarded as dangerous have been ordinarily prohibited in municipal parks in Japan. However, there is a unique municipal park, named the Min-na-no-hiroba Park, that the Office of Nerima Ward has permitted the use for football and a NPO has held football classes. Following is the reason for the permission of the use for football there: first, a lot of residents have shared value that children have been able to play football in the park, secondly, the plan established by the residents was approved as the Community Plan for Facility Maintenance and Management of The Nerima Ward Ordinance for Liveable Development, and finally, members of the NPO have been able to sustainably carry out the monitoring and guiding.

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This paper empirically analyzes the spatial accessibility to home care services in Hirosaki-shi, a local city in Japan, and discusses the implication of the analysis. First, we calculate the spatial distribution of the values of the accessibility measure in a method called the 2SFCA (two-step floating catchment area) method, and demonstrate that the values of the accessibility measure are remarkably low in several areas. Second, we employ accessibility measures other than that in the 2SFCA method and calculate the spatial distributions of the values of the measures. Third, we show that there are substantial differences between the accessibility measures, and that the 2SFCA method is expected to adequately detect the areas that are problematic in terms of the accessibility to care services. Finally, we argue that the 2SFCA method helps to realize the idea of integrated community care system.

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In the Netherlands, municipalities are increasingly installing a new type of bikeway - fietsstraat, which is shared by bicycles and cars, with priority given to the former. The aim of this study is to examine design guidelines and practices of fietsstraten in terms of places where they are applied and street design to reveal similarities and differences between those guidelines and practices. It turns out that design guidelines on the places are consistent, and practices generally follow the guidelines. Regarding street design, design guidelines advocate various profiles while practices use various profiles according to unique criteria. In addition, it was found that both cyclists and motorists understand their correct position on the streets as the number of the streets increases.

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A number of preceding studies implicitly assumes that bus services have complementary effect on rail use. However, the relationship between the bus service levels and rail use has not been quantitatively discovered. This study attempts to revisit the effect of bus services on rail use using elasticity as an indicator. Mesh-based data were employed to take spatial characteristics including proximity to rail and bus services into account. The result demonstrated the synchronized elasticity of rail and bus use on bus service levels especially in the region where bus services are vital for rail access, which implies that the provision of bus services may promote further rail use.

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Land prices in local cities have been decreasing even in the city center area, where the price is the highest in the city. Due to the decline of center area, the land property tax revenue has reduced, which has caused the deterioration of municipal finance in many municipalities. Meanwhile, it was reported that land prices have improved by the effect of an urban redevelopment in Takamatsu Marugamemachi shopping street, known as a leading case of shopping street regeneration. The purpose of this study is to analyze how urban redevelopment spilled over into land prices in chronological order. The result revealed two way effects of spillovers by urban redevelopment. One is the direct and rapid price increase observed just after the development, and the other is the uphold of the improvement effect observed for a long term after the rapid price increase period.

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This study clarifies application situation and its problem about reverse area division in local cities by hearing and field survey for local authorities. The followings are concluded. In about 80% of reverse area divided examples before 2000, few individual developments have occurred. But in the examples the application factors of which were 'no prospect of future development' or 'farm land preservation', 34.6 - 44.4% are the districts with over10% of developed land ratio. As for related problems there are 1. sprawl and land use control after reverse area division, 2. appropriate designation about area-divided at the first time, and 3. to keep convenient shape for future land use as each district.

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Mobility Management (MM) typically emphasizes soft measures. However, hard measures that make it easier for citizens to change their travel habits are equally important. MM in two Swedish cities that have both combined MM efforts with recent public transport infrastructure development were studied and compared. Measures were viewed in relation to the contexts in which they were implemented: city size, form, and historical context. MM was well coordinated with city/traffic planning in both cases. Their comparison showed that Malmö, the larger city, adopted a more demonstrative and communicative approach to promoting both soft and hard key measures than did Lund, the smaller city. This approach aimed to raise awareness in a wider population, including those living outside of the areas immediately influenced by MM measures. In Lund, efforts were directed more towards behavioral interventions. This was possible because of the compactness of the city and its history, which gave citizens a shared understanding of its identity as a bicycle-oriented city.

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This study examines efforts by the city of Tokushima to turn the site of Tokushima castle into a public park. Conceived initially as a six-year ongoing project based on a plan by Seiroku Honda, portions were moved forward when Tokushima Prefecture constructed lodging facilities in the park for a visit by the Crown Prince. These facilities were built on the site of an existing public hall, which was moved to a new location. The results differed from Honda's design. Afterward, the city's financial difficulties caused the project to be postponed, deviating from the original budget plan. A library was built to commemorate the enthronement of the Taisho Emperor. This also deviated from Honda's design, and some opposed the move.

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