Among cities hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake, 6 cities were selected as the "Future City" by the national government. In this study, we discuss current status of projects in the 6 cities through analyzing the progression status of projects, 6 cities' opinions about the "Future City" Initiative, and present conditions and issues of main projects in each city. It is difficult to evaluate whether projects in each city will contribute to creation of new value suitable for ideas of the Initiative at this stage. The 6 cities are now facing questions of how they create the "Future City" under difficult conditions that there are no national subsidies peculiar to cities selected as the "Future City".

This study aims to obtain basic knowledge about problems concerning ecotourism guides and guidance and countermeasures for them. This study clarifies that ecotourism guides cannot make their living by working full-time and they are performed by elderly or retired persons, based on results of a questionnaire survey to members of the "Urbandai Eco-guides Group". It also clarifies that countermeasures to problems of aging and the shortage of successors of guides are not taken in most areas promoting ecotourism while countermeasures problems of maintenance or improvement of quality of guidance are taken in most areas promoting ecotourism, based on results of a questionnaire survey to organizations promoting ecotourism in Japan. This study concludes that it is necessary that diverse stakeholders reconfirm the meaning and goals of ecotourism and reconsider significance of guides in each area.

This study analyzes consciousness of residents in Kitashiobara Village of Fukushima Prefecture, where is designated as Bandai-Asahi national park, on the national park and the national park system, and identifies issues toward reconstruction of the national park system through comparing residents' consciousness with problem recognition of rangers demonstrated in a previous research. This study points out that both residents and rangers recognize that it is difficult to conserve and promote to use national parks under the current system. This study also points out that they recognize that it is necessary to convert the management system from unitary management by the national government to collaborative management by diverse stakeholders and to expand measures to vitalize the life and livelihood in addition to regulation on land use activities. This study concludes that it is necessary to reconstruct the national park system on the basis of these common recognition between residents and rangers.

Many housings were constructed in suburban areas to deal with housing shortage in high economic growth period. In these areas, there are various problems as follows: aging of the residents, collapse of communities and increase of vacant lots and house. This study discusses sustainability of suburban residential areas by analyzing current status of residents and residents' evaluation of living environment based on the questionnaire survey to householders and their children in Horai New Town of Fukushima City. The key findings are: a) Judging from residential trend and residents' consciousness, depopulation is expected to progress. b) However, about 40% of children have the intention to succeed to their parents' land and houses. In addition, about 55% of children do not decide whether to succeed them. c) To improve sustainability of Horai New Town, it is necessary to improve living environment such as shopping or public transportation.

This study aimed to analyze the relationship between recognition of the names of streets and rents as well as land prices. To this end, this article conducted an empirical research in Tenjin and Hakata districts in Fukuoka city, Omiya and Urawa districts in Saitama city, Hamamatsu city, Kumamoto city and Takamatsu city. The article used the numbers of hits by Google and Twitter as indicators for the recognition, analyzed its correlation with the numbers of the pedestrians, and conducted a multiple regression analysis of the rents and land prices. The explanatory valuables consisted of the recognition, characters of buildings, locations, shapes of the streets and the numbers of the pedestrians. The result showed that the rent was associated with the characters of the building, and the land price with the recognition.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how the commercial clusters redeveloped newly and their existing neighborhoods are segregated, are harmonized with, become one commercial cluster while repeating separation and fusion and also, how do these spread out and infiltrate. To this end, this study focused on commercial complexes that have been increasing among redevelopment projects recently, and analyzed the commercial clusters in Olinas Kinshicho and its neighborhood. The result showed that the redeveloped commercial complex can be harmonized with its neighborhoods, but can tend to generate a cluster with specific types of facilities. This leads to different development between the redeveloped commercial complex and its neighborhood as well as among types of facilities. This means that such projects have difficulties in mutual penetration.

In recent years, the urban policy of compact city concept, which locates workplaces and entertainment facilities near homes, has been promoted. However, it may cause narrowing action range and thus losing the opportunity to obtain information and diversity. Under the condition of a constant density, the number of available facilities for dropping in on is reduced because many types of function are integrated. Thus, this paper studied urban space composition easy to dropping in by focusing on placement of workplaces and entertainment facilities as well as homes. The analysis of virtual cities revealed that, in certain conditions on available time and the route of dropping in, a city where areas of different types of function are separated is easy to drop in.

The paper tried to reveal why land banks have been established in the states of Ohio and Michigan, and carried bundling system to deal with foreclosed properties, going through the interviews for professionals and Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation. Bundling system has positive aspects, in one sense, and negative consequences we must take in account when foreclosed properties are grouped into bundling.

The green roof policy including by-laws, regulations, and incentives of City of Toronto and Portland in North America was investigated and studied. Both of the city's green roof policies were derived from the stormwater management effects of green roofs. In additions, Toronto's green roof policy was executed based on the detailed studies focusing on the economic impact to the city. This caused that Toronto became the first city in North America that had a green roof by-law. Based on the research of the two cities' green roof policy, the green roof regulation in Tokyo, Japan, focusing on heat island effect, was compared and studied.

Dept. of Housing and Urban Planning, Building Research Institute has conducted the questionnaire survey to all local authorities about equipment and utilization situations of geospatial data. This questionnaire was carried out in February 2015. The replies were obtained from about 83.4% of local authorities. This paper is to report the simple tabulation results about prefectures and municipalities with city planning area of this questionnaire as a quick report.

The purpose of this study is to clarify the influence of the conversion of the former military grounds to the urbanization in Toyokawa City. Toyokawa City was born as the city based on the huge naval arsenal, and faced to the problem how to use former military ground such as weapon factories, worker's housing and so on after World War II. Most of former naval arsenal became industrial area again by 1975. The new civic core including a city hall, a fire station, a police station, and an exercise park was developed in the former military grounds of south side of the industrial area. Several schools and public housings were also developed in the former military grounds near the industrial area.

Light Rail Transit (LRT) has recently developed primarily in Western countries. LRT of Toyama city opened in 2006; moreover, Light Rail Vehicles (LRV) and barrier-free trains are currently being introduced and promoted by a tram company. In addition, the introduction of the LRT is under consideration in Yokohama city and Utsunomiya city, although, currently, new openings have been limited to Toyama city. This study investigated four aspects of Japanese 20 tram companies: the production side , managerial ,service level surface and environment-friendly face using the DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) method.

During the late 1950s and the 1960s, Japan experienced a period of high economic growth. Although metropolitan urban core areas were increasingly concentrated, disorderly urban sprawl continued to expand, which became a problem for the country. A series of Newtowns (orderly planned cities) were developed to solve this problem. The Kohoku Newtown is famous in the Kanto region. Although construction began on the Kohoku Newtown in 1974, its public transit was limited to bus service until 1993, when the subway opened. Based on this history, this study analyzed the influences of the subway on land-use changes.

The Great East Japan Earthquake (2011) implicated that it is important to consider not only complex disaster but also population change in long-range land use planning through the development pre-recovery plans. This study aims to contribute to the advancement of mitigation urban planning by developing spatial database containing information of complex disaster and population change and, consider its potential usage. The study presents the model to create long-range scenarios of urban area relocation from risk areas to safe areas in case municipalities as a foundation for pre-recovery planning. The model enables land use planners to understand the quantity of population transfer and urban area relocation by capacity calculation using the developed database.

This series of workshops was conducted for the purpose of planning and sustainable development by involving local people. Workshops were conducted for a period of two years as a fundamental part of the Irouzaki Jungle Park's Redevelopment Project. This paper demonstrates the usefulness and difficulties of conducting workshops in coordination with community development. It also indicates that it is essential to support the community in construction and management activities. Our results indicate three essential points. One, through the workshop discussions, the direction of touristic activities was decided by the people. Secondly, some members of the local community of Irouzaki attended the workshops, and were able to develop more positive perspectives regarding development. Thirdly, the importance of using well-trained and experienced workshop facilitators was observed.

This study examines the potential role of local festivals in enhancing communication among residents in a local community. The study focuses on two traditional local festivals, Ennichi and Jizobon, in Nagata Ward, Kobe City. We conduct a questionnaire survey to understand how these festivals form new interactions in the community, and how people enjoy communication and develop relationship based on them. The results indicate that Ennichi and Jizobon have mainly connected residents of almost homogeneous characteristics who had not had chances to meet without the festivals and have often formed strong ties among them that are expected to work during disasters. Based on the finding that organizers of the festivals have played a role of hubs of the network, the study further considers how to achieve sustainable development of the festivals and the social network in the local community.

This article reports a project case about an introduction of ultra-lightweight vehicles (ULVs) in a local city. Recently, ULVs has been introduced in a local city not only as eco-friendly cars, but also community-friendly cars. These vehicles are characterized by electrification and miniaturization. It is likely that such modes would become increasingly popular and would also be utilized in a rental and sharing transportation service set up within a community. In Kitakyushu City, rental service in tourist area, Moji ward, safety patrol, and shopping support in Kokura-Minami ward was done in 2014. In addition, the authors also clarified the expectations of users regarding such a service based on a questionnaire survey in this report article. The results showed that these service is satisfactory, but is expected to be more beneficial to the local community.