In Japan, railway planning and operation is mainly carried out by private railway companies, and local governments are not responsible for such policies. Therefore, the profitability of a private business is emphasized, and services continue to decline on unprofitable local railway lines. It has also led to the expansion of low-density urban structures that depend on automobiles. Such changes in the urban structure are likely to bring a great burden in the future, such as an increase in maintenance costs for urban public facilities. With that in mind, Toyama City decided to make a major shift in the idea of urban development from around 2005, aiming to “create a compact city centered on public transportation.” As a method, we decided to actively promote the improvement of railway convenience. In this research, the authors who have actually worked on these projects will summarize the process leading up to such a policy, and the results after that. In addition, based on the knowledge gained in the process, we propose some ideas for future railway policies in Japan.

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Videos can be a useful means to educate a wider public, and the paper proposes that an educational video provided through a video sharing site can be a useful tool for mobility management. A questionnaire survey focusing on attitudes towards car and bicycle “usage etiquette” was conducted to examine the effectiveness of a specific video for attitude modification. The results of the survey confirm that watching the video would be effective for altering the attitudes among the under 50s. Further, among frequent car and bicycle users it increased awareness of the negative impacts of random car and bicycle parking on cityscapes.

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Osaka Castle Park is a famous tourist destination, as well as a valuable place for Osaka residents to enjoy recreation and relaxation in a city with little greenery. In order to provide services and generate new attractiveness suited to an international hub of history tourism, PMO operations were adopted at Osaka Castle Park in fiscal year 2015 (FY2015), and since then, various commercial facilities have been built in Osaka Castle Park. Osaka City has stated that adoption of PMO operations improved the FY2019 budget balance by about 200 million yen compared to FY2014 prior to adoption of PMO operations. This research verifies whether there actually was a roughly 200 million yen improvement in the budget balance at Osaka Castle Park due to adoption of PMO operations. First of all, the results showed that, even after Osaka City adopted PMO operations, it bore and still bearing various construction costs including for improvement and repair of playground equipment, paths, and fall prevention fencing. It was found that this type of construction costs were included in the FY2014 budget prior to adoption of PMO operations, but not included in budgets from FY2015 after adoption of PMO operations, i.e., that the budget improvement of about 200 million yen was a result of comparing two budgets with different standards. It was also found that, due to the effects of Osaka City bearing typhoon damage recovery costs and costs for the Ishigaki Stone Wall exhibition project, as well as compensating the PMO operator for losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the budget total, including various construction costs from FY2015 when PMO operations were adopted to FY2020, is running a deficit of about 190 million yen. Therefore, in parks where PMO operations have been adopted, it is necessary to conduct correct evaluations using numerical values based on common standards and utilize the results in park policies from the perspective of improving the value of public assets.

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The subject of this study is Maebashi City, Gunma Prefecture, which is a local city where the supply and demand of public graveyards has been tight in recent years. The purpose of this study is to examine the method of grasping the location of the graveyard and to clarify the issues of graveyard policy of local governments from the relationship between the characteristics of graveyard locations and the intention of the citizens. There is no statistical information on the location of the graveyard, but it is important information when considering graveyard administration. First, based on the graveyard ledger, we set a method to add the location of the graveyard obtained from the map created by the government and Google Maps. Based on this method, a field survey of the graveyard was conducted, and it was found that it was located on the area around Maebashi Station, in the urbanized area, and in the suburbs. According to a questionnaire survey on graveyards for citizens, households wishing to acquire tombs want to acquire them in suburban municipal graveyards, so it is necessary to continue to provide sustainable municipal cemeteries. In addition, some households who wish to have a tomb prefer public transportation, walking, or bicycle as a means of transportation to visit the graveyard, so it is necessary to consider means of transportation other than automobiles.

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There are many remote islands in Japan. Most of these islands are connected by bridges, but some still only have ferryboats or passenger ships between the island and the mainland as a means of transportation. The residents of remote islands have to transfer from a ferryboat to a local bus at a transport hub when they visit the mainland to go shopping or to hospital for example. For residents of these remote islands, especially the elderly, it is a burden to wait for a long time for the bus or the ferryboat and to change the mode of transportation at transport hubs. We have evaluated the burden by the generalized time. The generalized time is a measure which evaluates the mobility burden for users of remote island routes and is obtained easily and quantitatively by investigating walking speed and transit behaviour. However, we were not able to confirm whether the acquired results are specific to the solitary Japanese island surveyed or it can be expanded to remote islands generally. Therefore, we applied the method to South Korea, which also has many remote islands. In this study, we investigated South Korean remote island areas and confirmed the method of generalized time. We also clarified differences of Japanese and South Korean residential areas’ features based on the method.

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In Japan, a decline in the total fertility rate has contributed to a declining birthrate, resulting in a declining population. In particular, the populations of small regional cities are generally declining, and some municipalities have been classified as annihilation-possibility cities because they are unlikely to see both natural and social population growth. Municipalities across the country are facing serious challenges to cope with declining birthrates, and also curbing the decline in tax revenues and living infrastructure caused by a shrinking population. Kesennuma City in Miyagi Prefecture, located on the northeastern edge of the Miyagi Prefecture coast, is no exception, as its population has been declining constantly since 1980. The Kesennuma area is currently working to promote migration and settlement from the Tokyo metropolitan area. However, even if the advantages of living in Kesennuma are publicized externally as part of the immigration and settlement policies, it is difficult to determine that the declining birthrate will be resolved in a sustainable and long-term manner if people do not substantially feel the value of living in the community and raising their children in that community after moving. Rather, what is important in the future is to understand environmental factors that may lead to the positive value of raising children in the Kesennuma region, and to formulate policies to enhance that value. In this paper, we attempted to understand what environmental factors define a good environment for raising children in Kesennuma City, based on group interviews at town meetings where residents with experience in parenting exchanged their opinions. As a result, three factors that define a good parenting environment in Kesennuma City were identified.

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Increasing medical expense has been a strong pressure on Japanese public finance, and recent journalism and research have suggested that it may be partly a result of “unnecessary health care”. While there are large disparities in medical expenses among prefectures, the disparities don’t correlate with the residents’ health, but rather correlate with the number of beds. These facts suggest that the increase of medical expenses may not be driven by demand but supply. However, there are still insufficient empirical evidence, and very few studies have tried to observe the existence of excess medical cares. In this study, we conducted a survey of hospital physicians in the top five and bottom five prefectures in age-adjusted per-capita medical expenditure. We measured the tendency toward unnecessary care in the participants’ attitudes and practices and the hospital management policies they are working for, and tested whether the tendency is stronger in prefectures with higher medical expenditure. As a result, non-negligible percentages of physicians answered that some medical tests and treatments are required for managerial reasons rather than medical needs, and that their hospitals don’t place the highest priority on patients’ well-being. In addition, in the areas with high medical expenditure, hospital management tends to focus on maximizing profits, maintaining the number of hospitalizations, and avoiding lawsuits and claims. These results suggest that unnecessary health care can exist in the regions with higher medical expenditure.

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The medical expenditure and its share of public expenditures have been increasing in Japan. While it should not necessarily be seen as a problem if the increase is caused by health care needs, it has been reported that some of the medical practices are “excessive” and the “excessive medical care” may damage the health of people in some cases. In addition, under the current austerian fiscal policy, the increase in medical expenses may put pressure on other budgets, such as education, defence and infrastructures, and it is concerned that the total public interest may be harmed. However, there has not been enough empirical research on “unnecessary health care” and it is even unclear whether it actually exists. In this study, we developed a comprehensive health index of prefecture residents and tested the correlation between the index and age-adjusted per-capita medical expense to provide basic knowledge on unnecessary health care. If there is a correlation between them, it can be assumed that the difference in medical expenditure is determined by the health status of the residents, and the probability of the existence of unnecessary health care will be reduced. On the other hand, if there is no correlation, the probability will increase. Therefore, the correlation is basic empirical evidence of whether unnecessary health care exists. The result showed that there is no correlation between the comprehensive health index and age-adjusted per-capita medical expenditure among prefectures. This can be interpreted as an empirical finding that provides relative support for the possibility of the existence of unnecessary health care.

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While the COVID-19 pandemic has been having people refrain from going out and compelling restaurants to limit their business operations, the “self-restraint vigilantism” that attacks stores and individuals who do not take thorough preventive actions has become a social problem. However, there have not been enough empirical evidence on the factors that induce such attitudes. In this study, using the data set of a survey conducted by the JSCE, we examined how people perceive the risk of the virus, composed psychological scales to measure attitudes such as “support for self-restraint policy”, “effort of personal preventions out of home” and “self-restraint vigilantism”, and exploratively analysed the factors that in-fluence these attitudes based on multiple regression analysis with stepwise variable selection. The results suggest that the risk image may be formed irrespective of the difference of infection rates across regions and that media and the opinions of experts have significant influences on the people's attitudes.

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Since 1990, France has actively introduced new public transportation systems and restructured urban centres. Consensus building has played an essential role in their realization. This research first describes the history of consensus-building public policies in France. It then summarizes consensus-building steps defined by the law, particularly prior consultation and public review, describing the institutional changes since 2010. We illustrate this by describing a case study of consensus-building activities done by local authorities in Angers, a city with about 150,000 people: between 2013-2019, the city converted parking lots into pedestrian-only spaces. This research reflects on the evolution of consensus building in France over the past thirty years and considers its current characteristics, significance, and future issues. Our work contributes to the discussion on consensus building in Japan by highlighting the importance of local governments and leaders and their role in implementing consensus-building activities.

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The issue of vacant houses is attracting nationwide attention. Especially in rural areas, there are many cases where vacant houses are left unoccupied without being offered for sale on the market. This study conducted a life history survey on the cases of vacant house utilization in rural areas, and examines how owners and tenants made decisions regarding the utilization of vacant houses in their life experiences. To this end, interview survey was conducted with owners and tenants in two cases in Ehime Prefecture. The study explored relevant factors that led to the use of vacant houses in each case. It then reconsidered the problem structure of utilization of vacant houses in rural areas in terms of (1) trust relationship between house owners and tenants, (2) spatial and temporal contextual dependence of vacant houses, and (3) life history conditions of owners and tenants. Finally, implications of our findings for promoting the utilization of vacant houses in rural areas were discussed.

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