The purpose of this article is to clarify possibility of the welfare in today's urbanized community.The community-based welfare theory by Shigeo Okamura examines such a problem adequately. When a senior citizen or a handicapped person receives a support of the daily life, relations with a social worker and the other supporters are important.However, it is controlled greatly whether inhabitants accept such an activity at the same time.The dual community theory brings prosperity both in urban sociology and in social welfare studies.

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It is a big issue for local communities to survive in the trend of low-fertility and population aging. Local communities in Japan have been confronted with population aging not only in depopulating rural areas but also in downtown and suburban areas. Nowadays, urban communities are aware of densely inhabited area of older persons, but they cannot deal with population aging effectively, because of weakness of social capital. Urban people tend to depend on the market system or the government system too much. Japanese Long-Term Care Insurance System is such an example as depending on the political economy. Almost people it will substitute of the long-term care by family care givers, although it was only a complementary system for family care. For establishing the social well-being, it needs to combine formal care with informal care for the frail elderly. Then, we should revitalize the social capital in urban communities. In America, naturally occurring retirement communities (NORC) are targeted of supportive service programs (SSPs) since 1980s. The NORC-SSPs are possibilities for thinking about the social capital in urban communities. We will learn the paradigm shift from old type of aging services to new type of NORC-SSPs.

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Despite the spread of globalization discourses focusing on capital market and ubiquitous information technology, more attention to the meanings of “place”, “constructed structure”, “communities” and everyday practices investigated from ethnic studies in urban sociology has been increasing.In this paper, I try to reconstitute the concepts and methodology of ethnic studies in the discussion of the “transnationalism from below” theories by considering the reason that urban sociology incorporated the ethnic studies into its research.
In the first section, I indicate the difficulties of migration research from “a structural perspective” that has been advanced in the research field of Global Sociology in Japan.In the second section, I reconsider the original subjects of the research of urban ethnicities, and, I approve the idea that the meanings of ethnic problems occur in a transitional, splitting and new generaton.In the third section, I demonstrate that the main theme and the concepts of the ethnic studies are regenerated in the transnationalism from below theories, and insist that we should research the generating processes of other networks of meaning and power by investigating the everyday practices in transnational communities.Finally, I show that we can open up a new research field in above mentioned subjects.

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It is pointed out that some approaches to ethnic relations in urban sociology in Japan have such defects as follows. First of all, they do not take into account the structural effect of state and capitalism in their analyses of urban ethnic phenomena. As a result, they cannot analyze some important ethnic phenomena, such as the selection and exclusion of immigrants by the state, and have a logical structure that leads to forceful assimilation of those entities that are considered “different”. The purpose of this article is to respond to theses criticisms from the standpoint of the life-structure approach, which is one of the main approaches to ethnic relations in urban sociology in Japan. The article begins with an explanation of the life-structure approach. Next, it searches a way to place the approach in a structural context, using an analytical framework that consists of three types of process: economic, political and intermediate processes.(This framework is used in the structural analysis of Kamaishi city in the 1950s.) The author argues that distinction should be made between the notion of integration and the notion of union and stresses the importance of comparative analysis of urban ethnic relations.

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This paper aims to discuss how to research and describe the globalizing society by urban sociology and ethnic studies. There are three multiple levels of analyzing global phenomena as local, national and global perspective. I ague that these three levels are related to each other. When we started to research newcomers in Ikebukuro area in 1988, we adopted community study approach. However recently they continue to stay in Japan and have founded their own migration systems in each group. As a result, there are new ethnic communities in Japan which changed the structure of urban local communities. They also established many associations and ethnic businesses by using their transnational social spaces between sending and receiving areas.
As S. Castles pointed out, in the 21st century, international migration study would become the main theme of sociological studies. A research is necessary to transcend the flame of nation state because none of social phenomena these days are not influenced by globalization.
I will explain the new perspective of transnational social space between China and Japan. We will have to research both the sending and receiving societies from the perspective of not only local and national level but also transnational level. Since 20% of Chinese residents in Japan have permanent residential status and every year about 5000 people obtain Japanese nationality, they are able to develop their businesses and opportunities built in both societies. There are new social spaces forming by Chinese transmigrants in urban and rural areas of China and Japan.
In conclusion, I suggest that we will be able to broaden the research field of urban sociology through ethnic and international migration studies such as the legacies of Chicago school to focusing these problems. In urban sociological studies, we will have to create a new perspective of globalizing urban society.

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This article aims to give an assessment of the impact of deregulation in urban planning.
Until the 1990s many researchers remarked that Tokyo was a less segregated city compared to western cities like New York and London. This was mainly because the Japanese government strongly controlled urban development and planning in Tokyo. In 2001, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi began political reform and it included deregulation of urban planning, which called the Urban Renaissance Policy. Deregulation will weaken the government's influence on Tokyo.The question is as follows: will Tokyo become polarized without the government's restriction?
This article shows two points by analyzing official statistics and business reports from Tokyo's 23 wards. First, the Urban Renaissance Policy has not weakened the Japanese government's influence on the city, nor changed the strong relationship between the government and the national company, though it has weakened the municipality's power to control urban development.Second, deregulation in the Urban Renaissance policy has allowed the implementation of high-rise and large-scale development, and it has accelerated interregional disparities in Tokyo. The Urban Renaissance policy divided Tokyo's 23 wards into two areas, developing central and waterfront areas and undeveloped areas. The data shows that the concentration of urban development, population growth, aging speed, and the growth in average income are all closely interconnected. Population trends and changes in average income have directly influenced the finances of the wards. Tax revenue has declined in wards where aging has advanced and thus policy support has become necessary. In conclusion, deregulation in urban planning has had negative impact on socio-spatial structure of Tokyo.

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This article aims to clarify how town planners'conceptual messages define the character of a residential group, and how they affect the building of community. In this case study, “conceptual messages” is defined as the words or design elements that are used to evoke nostalgic memories for American suburban life, particularly a sense of small-town community.In-depth interviews of residents of Kentlands, a Maryland prototype of a new urbanist town, were conducted to examine the potential of residents to create community based upon the town's planned features. Kentlands was designed to foster a diverse community, and although class diversity has not been achieved largely because of rising housing costs, Kentlands nevertheless makes clear the possibility of attracting residents who wish to build community, and the ability of the town's planned features and conceptual messages to affect the shape of that community.

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The purpose of this paper is to analyze a process of the production of social space by the real estate developer from the viewpoint of exchange theory. When we watch the urban developments and renewals around the Tokyo area from the first half of 1980's until today, such as Odaiba, Shiodome, Roppongi Hills and Tokyo Midtown, we find the strong influence of the real estate developers on space formation there. However, it cannot be said that the sociological study on the functions of real estate developer is abundant. Since the end of 1960's, New Urban Sociology has submitted the various issues, such as national intervention to urban deals, housing policy as reproduction of collective consumption, or roles of nationstate for total capital, from macro-viewpoint that is different from the Chicago school. I succeed these perspectives for analyzing capitalistic institutions and inherit the standpoint of H. Lefebvre about the production of social space. However, I analyze it as the social exchanges between individuals on a micro-level. From this point of view it is assumed that the social relations emerging from urban development are results of the social exchange processes. Therefore, I focus on the specialist's actions as exchanges in housing development project in the suburb of Tokyo, and make an attempt to explain how architectonic of abstract space described by Lefebvre appeared.

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The aim of this article is to clarify the institutional factors that have made city planning consultants dependent upon the public administration, by analysing the formative process of the use of private-sectr planning consultants by the public sector during the rapid economic growth era in Japan.
The result of this analysis can be summarized as follows:
Firstly, faced with increasing production of urban spaces during the rapid economic growth period and increasingly complicated procedures for urban space control, it became impossible for public administrative officials to oversee everything as they used to. For this reason, private-sector planning consultants became able to take part in urban space control which had once been exclusively under the purview of public administrative officials. Secondly, these “City Planning Consultants” had no choice but to take any such contract work in order to survive the severe competition among other private-sector professionals in the industry, because of the lack of an institution or industry board that could define or protect a clear role for city planning consultants. Lastly, the wage scale for the “City Planning Consultants” reproduced their functions as subcontractors that undertake affairs delegated by the public administrative officials.Consequently, planning consultants have been channeled into the current structure where they are completely dependent upon on the public administration system.

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This article proposes to explicate the economic and socio-cultural forces involved in the provision of space in central Tokyo as a factor in the development of the area. There were several arguments over landscaping. The appreciative attitude of the socio-cultural forces toward the Imperial Palace and their collective historical sentiments of modern Japan prevailed until recent times and were opposed to the verticalization of Marunouchi. However, such a feeling has weakened with the generational changes at Mitsubishi and the Mitsubishi Estate in the 1980s, and since then, development has been steered towards rapid verticalization. Furthermore, having recently experienced the demolition and redevelopment of Marunouchi Building, our attention is drawn to the research data, which illustrates the regional difference-that is meaningful-between 2-Chome and 3-Chome in the level of ascribed and retained that is being generated with regard to the selection and preservation of symbolism that spatially expresses the “Sense of Marunouchi”.

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This article aims to consider the integration policy for foreign residents in Japan, which promotes political and economic equality as well as cultural diversity, based on a case study of Yao City, Osaka. By analyzing the ethnic relations among Japanese, old comers, Korean minority, and new comers, the following four issues are discussed. 1) Official Japanese language education system should be established, for the lack of Japanese language proficiency makes it difficult for new comers not only to live a life in Japan but also to have relationships with Japanese. 2) Occupational support system for new comers is necessary making the best use of their ethnic networks and their multicultural background. 3) Current education system fails to encourage new comer children to build positive ethnicity.It should be revised taking mother tongue education into consideration, which brings many positive effects. 4) The inter-ethnic relationship between old comers and new comers is important. It makes new corners not only to have a chance to make relationships with Japanese but also to form positive ethnic identity.

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