Receivership is effective to cope with vacant property problems as an alternative approach of self-solution and government intervention. To overcome problems of Japanese receivership based on the civil law, a new receivership focusing only for vacant property issues is needed with: 1) change of thought of property right, 2) application including properties with unknown owner/ no heir, 3) enlargement of petitioners, 4); education of receiver candidates, 5) court decision based on whether maintenance is sufficient or not, 6) inclusion of property sales and borrowing in powers of receiver, and 7) clarification of distribution order of sales proceeds, with reference to the US. Establishment of concept of public nuisance is one of the preconditions.

Shopping and delivery problem (SDP) is to define a set of routes that satisfy shopping requirements between multiple pickup points and delivery points. In this paper, we focus on a variant of SDP where agents can share the task of shopping and delivery (i.e., Shopping and delivery problem with transshipment (SDPT)) and conduct an empirical study on the usefulness of "transshipment points". Based on the idea that the SDPT can be split into a shopping and a delivery task by going through a temporary depot (TD) where agents can transship items, we proposed a heuristic to solve these problems while optimizing the location of the TD. The results validated the effectiveness of our method and revealed fundamental properties of SDPT.

Dutch municipalities are increasingly constructing fietsstraten, where bicycles and cars share the road way on the condition that priority be given to the former. The aim of this study is to elucidate the recent development of fietsstraten in the Netherlands and the latest design guidelines for the fietsstraat by analyzing written materials and conducting interviews via e-mail. The fietsstraat has now acquired even symbolic value, representing a bicycle friendly city. Municipalities are transforming existing bicycle paths or lanes into fietsstraten for routes with heavy bicycle traffic. There are also fietsstraten where cyclists feel intimidated by cars. To improve safety on fietsstraten, new design guidelines for the fietsstraat were published in 2019, emphasizing the importance of adjusting the width of the road way to the amount of car and bicycle traffic.

The purpose of this study was to develop and implement a community learning program to cultivate children's "public sensibility," and to clarify its educational effects, based on a review of existing theories in the fields of education and developmental psychology regarding the way of relationship building between children and others. As a result, it was found that children can develop their public sensibility by encountering "Local people and nature" through walking around town and expressing what they learned and felt by making illustrated books and models with "Familiar others" who support the children's activities. In addition, the educational effects of the three activities of the program on children's public sensibility differed from each other, which could be grasped by the differences in the way the children interacted with familiar others and town.

This paper aims to compare public toilet location plans and clarify which location policies are suitable. First, we conducted a literature review and interview survey of local governments in urban areas of Japan to classify public toilet location policies. Then, we simulate changes in the accessibility of public toilets, which are reallocated according to the classified location policies. The results of the analysis show that: (1) the location policies can be classified into four types; (2) the policy which eliminates the empty space tends to produce superior results; and (3) the location along walking routes is unevenly distributed when private toilets are considered.

The study analyzes the relationship between the survivors' housing mitigation and risk perception in flood prone area during post disaster recovery period. We conducted questionnaire survey in Kurashiki City affected by the 2018 western Japan heavy rain. Using the concept of risk communication as a theoretical framework, our results reveal that housing mitigation is affected by flood depth, but not by people's risk perception which only impacts on consideration for relocation as a risk avoidance behavior. We conclude that different interventions need to be made for different groups categorized by two axes: risk perception and risk reduction behavior of homeowners. Our work contributed to suggest the possibility of changing risk reduction behavior through risk communication.

Recently, due to growing scales of natural disaster risks, residential relocation into safe areas has been promoted in addition to infrastructure development. On the other hand, the locational suitability needs to take account of the livability to do with the various values of the natural environment. Accordingly, this study examines the relationship between livability and infrastructure in consideration of the negative and positive aspects of the natural environments, in watershed and metropolitan areas. An online questionnaire was conducted to ask about infrastructure development and residential satisfaction of the case study areas. The residential perception is analyzed with Structural Equation Modeling. The result found that the natural infrastructure is more significant for livability in the watershed areas.

A large-scale urban development could arise various negative effects on surrounding villages, such as soaring of the land prices, sprawl-like development activities, conversion of farmlands, and declination in motivation for farming. this paper investigates 23 villages surrounding Seishin new towns in Nishi-ku which were directly affected by the urban development. Through investigation and comparison of the information about resident characteristic such as changes in the population, population composition and structure of employment, the characteristics of each small area are carefully described. By collating the results with the other small areas, the relationships of the villages to new town will be found out.

This paper analyzes the records and the future policies of 1,177 cities regarding the downsizing of commercial zoning areas to examine methods of revising land use regulations to maintain a lively city center. The results revealed the following points: First, commercial zone areas have expanded even as commercial demand has declined. Second, 15 cities have reduced commercial zoning by more than 5ha. Third, only a few cities have planned to reduce or revise commercial zoning in the future, but in those few cities, the zoning was reviewed based on their future land use demand. These findings suggest the need for a clear technical standard for the future operation of appropriate zoning.

In order to revitalize cities through creative industries, it is desirable to investigate the actual activities and location preferences of people involved in creative industries even after industrial promotion policies have been implemented. Based on the recognition of the above issues, we conducted a trend survey targeting Yokohama City, which is implementing creative city policies centered on arts and culture projects. Specifically, we conducted a statistical survey of the number of establishments and workers in the creative industry, and a questionnaire survey of artists and creators active in the Kannai and Kangai district. As a result, we were able to clarify the actual activities and location preferences of artists and creators, and gain knowledge about future creative city policies.

The population concentration tometropolitan area in a declining population has aggravated thevariousproblems of overcrowding in large cities and problems associated with a depopulation in local areas. In this study, based on a household utility model and government statistics, we determined the utility of model households by urban employment areaand the impact of each component. The results showed thatthere isno correlation between citysize and the utility, andthat althoughincomes are higher inlargecities, residential floor rentandcommutingtime depress utility,and thatthe deviation of utility for renting householdsin Tokyo is particularlynegative. This resultis consistent withthe Ministry ofLand, Infra-structure, Transport and Tourism's survey ofeconomic affluence by prefecture, butthis study is academically significant in that it established a common model household for inter-city comparison and evaluatedthe differences inincome, housing costs, andcommutingtime betweencities as utility inan integratedand empirical manner basedon a household utility model.

In this study, we analyzed bus dispersion boarding system to avoid dense spaces and reduce traveling time during the Covid-19 pandemic. We focused on the campus buses at University of Tsukuba. This is because we can get systematic data from a private transportation company, and we may obtain cooperation from students in changing their behavior. Firstly, we clarified the occurrence of bus bunching at University of Tsukuba by examining bus probe data. Secondly, we demonstrated that bus dispersion boarding system can avoid dense space and shorten the traveling time depending on conditions by performing a simplified simulation of the bus operation.

In 2019, the New Zealand Government decided to reform the Resource Management Act which is the law for urban and rural planning. The Resource Management Review Panel, appointed by the Minister for the Environment, released its report on the reform of the resource management system in 2020. As a result of the report, the government started to replace the existing law with three new laws. This study clarifies the issues and development of the urban and rural planning system in New Zealand by analyzing the latest reform based on the report and three cases that represent the faults in the act. Additionally, this study suggests some lessons from New Zealand which could be considered in the context of Japan.

As experiments of autonomous driving continue to progress, the introduction of function-equipped self-driving vehicles is anticipated. This research examines the number of vehicles and service features that would enable replacement by comparing the waiting time caused by this vehicle service with the time spent traveling from one’s home to a facility. For a service that all residents would use once a week for 30 minutes, 0.0058 vehicles/person would be required in a random-type demand scenario, which is about 1.5 times larger than the existing cab fleet. It was also found that the average generalized cost in urban centers was 1.15 to 1.57 times higher than in rural cities.