Using a novel dataset of building/locational characteristics of vacant houses and questionnaire surveys on their owners, we provide an evidence on the long-term vacancy in urban areas in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. Generally, vacant houses have disadvantageous building/locational characteristics than occupied ones, suggesting that used housing market works to some extent. However, the long-term vacancy surely exists even among the potentially advantageous properties. This social inefficiency is mainly caused by (i) the mismatch of the timing in inheritance or relocation of the owners and (ii) their intention to keep holding their properties for a while as the

The purpose of this research is clarifying what kind of factors have a relationship with abandoned vacant houses by cross tabulation analysis. The factors contain the characteristics of both physical aspects and property owner of vacant houses. Key findings were as follows. First, several tendencies regarding to abandonment of vacant houses were observed among factors. For example, the worse the abandoned vacant houses was, the narrower the road attached to the vacant houses was. Second, the extent of abandonment of vacant houses differed depending on the neighborhoods. It could be considered that such extent is related to the characteristics of the neighborhoods. Further research needs to be conducted on quantification of the characteristics per neighborhood.

This research is a trial to use deep learning for crime prediction in Japan. Lately many kinds of public data have been releasing as open data. With these data, we can freely try deep learning which needs massive training data. Since crime victimization location is not random but has spatial autocorrelation, we try to predict crime victimization with autocorrelation as two kinds of problems, regression and classification. As a result, adjusted coefficient of determination reached 0.82 as regression, and we get probabilities of crime as classification.

This study aimed to discuss appropriate urban greening of private land through the examination of quantitative leading guidelines for greening of local government code. By collecting descriptions on urban greening of ordinances, and comparative analysis using them, it was revealed that 27.7% of prefectures and 75% of ordinance-designated cities had quantitative leading guidelines for greening. Most of them were affected by Factory Location Act and Conservation of Urban Greenery Act, and the rest of them were affected by Landscape Act or global warming countermeasure. Green cover ratio was used in the codes, but there were variety of the way to calculate the ratio. By classification of them, they were proved to be consisted from six main rules. Based on the results of the analysis, the problems and how to develop new guidelines by controlling details of the six rules were discussed.

This thesis sets forth the manner in which CCTV should be installed in public areas in order to balance individual privacy rights with security. The first part of this thesis presents the background of this issue, arguments from both the advocates and detractors of such use of CCTV, and Japanese case law. The second part of this thesis analyzes: (i) if Japanese public opinion in favor of privacy rights varies over time; and (ii) what factors influence public opinion via analysis of a newspaper article-database that is still connected to or influenced by public opinion. In conclusion, articles and arguments in favor of privacy rights are concentrated around the years 2002 to 2005 and several factors played an important role towards this, for example the technical progress of cameras at this time, successful CCTV use in the Shinjuku area, acts of terrorism in the United States and the United Kingdom, and murders solved by evidence recorded by CCTV placed in public areas.

This study aims to understand the condition of solitary death generation for elderly single household in the local city, and examine the generation risk of the solitary death and its tendency from the viewpoint of the city planning such as the residence condition and the residential locations. We seek after the relation between the solitary death and the residence, using the investigation of the solitary death, national census and the human mortality data.<br>As a result, we confirm that the local city has the similar tendency to solitary death with the large city, and that the solitary death risk of the early stage elderly living in the condominium is high. Moreover, we clarify that the consideration of the solitary death problem is necessary for promotion of living in the central area in the future.

This study aims to forecast the revenue in the future from a past transition of the property tax revenue(PTR), and to examine the ideal way of an urban consolidating for the revenue securing in local cities. We analyze the change in the PTR of nine years until 2015 according to the district for four cities. As a result, we find that the housing lot area and the floor space of a wooden house increase remarkably in suburbs, and that the assessed value of land had greatly fallen in the whole area of city. Next, when we forecast the PTR in 2030 based on it, we clarify the tendency that revenue will keep falling in the future. When we induce the development with the timbered house in past nine years in the suburbs to the central area with non-timber building, we confirm the effect of suppressing the fall of the PTR.

Recently, the decline of railway service is concerned in the suburbs of Tokyo metropolitan area, because the area is facing to the declining railway users caused by the declining population and aged society. However it is necessary to maintain railway service for the realization of compact plus network. The purpose of this study is to clarify residential induction area in conjunction with railway service for sustainable urban area. The paper firstly analyzes a range of station's territories, followed by the analysis of targets of resident population inside station's territories and a range of residential induction area for sustainable railway service. As a result, the paper clarified that the local authorities should make a range of residential induction area smaller for sustainable network.

After the East Japan Great Earthquake, the demand of decentralized energy system is dramatically increased from the disaster prevention point. At the same time, the government recommends local authorities to make the Urban Renovation and Compact City Plan to make Compact-City-Network. Even the potential of introducing decentralized energy system into the city is expected to go up by concentrating the energy demands into the city by the Urban Renovation and Compact City Plan, the feasibility is unclear. <br>The purpose of this study is to clarify the potential of introducing decentralized energy system along with the Urban Renovation and Compact City Plan. The paper firstly discusses the trends of policy of energy infrastructure and the way of making the Urban Renovation and Compact City, followed by an analysis of the effectiveness of introducing decentralized energy system along with the Urban Renovation and Compact City to clarify the feasibility of that.

The purpose of this research is to clarify the spatial features of a comfortable shopping center, especially from the viewpoint of good or bad visibility, based on the analysis of the behavior by visitors such as shopping behavior routes and numbers of stores stopped in. To this end, in two facilities, 19 investigators actually performed simulated shopping behaviors. The result suggests the following. The goodness or badness of visibility does not necessarily lead to easy searchability. However, it influences the choice of the stores, and stores with good visibility are likely to be selected beyond the ratio in all the stores.

This paper aimed to examine planning policies of urban regeneration in East London before Olympic project was conceived, and to compare these planning policies and the legacy planning in London's Candidate Files. In the 1990s, UK Government continued urban regeneration projects in East London subsequent to Docklands' redevelopment. But these projects had proceeded in a piecemeal way and at a slower pace. The Mayor of London elected in 2000 insisted on bringing the Olympic Park to Stratford in East London. Moreover, London has already acquired land and granted planning consent for the Olympic Park prior to submitting Candidate Files. London had embed Olympic Legacy planning into the regeneration process and could effectively use Olympics as the major catalyst for regeneration.

The plants that grew on 107 lots of vacant houses in Higashiomi City were visible from the adjacent streets, and most of them were voluminous trees. Therefore, the plants contributed to formation of landscape of the streets they lined up along, by creating certain amount of green. The overgrown plants covering the vacant houses embodied a sense of worn, weathered beauty. In addition, the plants were able to be borrowed and utilized as background of the gardens in the adjacent lots. These findings implied a new way of forming streetscapes by using what already existed as it used to be, just like the manner of Japanese garden making. The methods of qualitative evaluation of the overgrown plants, the ways of pruning and maintaining them and the systems of co-management of them were to be researched.

The design principle of Dan Kiley was to create the urban forest which enabled people to feel spatial changes when passing through the trees. His design was also characterized by his arranging trees in geometric forms. The objective of this survey was to grasp the ways how Kiley had realized his idea in 25 works of nonresidential project through arranging trees geometrically. The results of analyses of drawings, plans and articles were as follows. 1. There were three types of tree arrangement. The trees were arranged in lines, grids and enclosed shapes. 2. It was possible to walk through the trees arranged in geometric forms because the grounds between them were paved or lawn. On the other hand, it was impossible to walk through the trees in planting beds. 3. Various types and forms of trees were used, and no specific tendencies were recognized among the arrangements.

This study aims to clarify the achievements and challenges of spatial planning for a sub center in a local city with less attention than a main center. First, we found that the urban environment has been formed through the following three steps: infrastructure development, land-use control, and transit environment and urban design. Then we concluded that there are some challenges such as lack of linkages between the plan of infrastructure development and that of transit environment and urban design. This study implies that, for a local government, it is meaningful to prepare a spatial plan for a sub center which meets the requirements as follows; 1) focusing on a station area, 2) comprehensively including infrastructure development, land-use control, transit environment and urban design, 3) concreteness leading to the implementation, 4) management of time, actors and cost of the implementation, and 5) monitoring condition of the urban environment.

This study investigates the balance between publicness and profitability of public-private partnerships in<br>urban parks in Japan. Toyosuna Park Management Project of Chiba City is selected as a case study. Toyosuna Park is managed by a private company, AEON Mall Co., Ltd. Although there is no profitable facility in the park, AEON covers all the costs for maintaining the park by profit of holding events in the park. Review of reports and interviews to Chiba City and AEON was conducted. As a result, it is found that publicness and profitability are unbalanced currently as AEON had large deficits because of rigid permission rules of Chiba City, which ban all the commercial events.<br>Therefore, for continuing public-private partnerships, Chiba City and AEON needs to find the way to approve more private sector's benefit, for example permitting locally-based company's commercial events.

This article demonstrates the institutionalization of civic participation for urban development by taking the example of Strasbourg, France. Various participation tools include district council, citizen council, foreigner council, urban workshops, and project workshops. The local government devises citizen participation tools according to their intention of how to modify urban development processes. That is to say, local councilors and public servants use these tools to effectively promote their urban plans. This process shows that local democracy is an important base of urban development for making cities more open and livable.

We investigated the associations of physical activity of elderly residents with built environment and social capital in Takashimadaira, a large residential complex in Tokyo, Japan. As built environment indices, we adopted floor number and the distance to the supermarket in front of the nearest neighbor station. Also, as physical activity indices, we adopted step counts adjusted for age, sex and month, ratio of step counts on rainy days to that on non-rainy days and ratio of step counts after/before intervention. We found that step counts of residents living far from the nearest station and on 7th floor or upper decreased more and those of residents who participated in community activities or volunteer activities decreased less on rainy days.

The awareness about the impotence of biodiversity had increased in business sectors, and four assessment systems for urban green spaces have been developed, which assessed and authorized the value of green spaces created by private companies. This study aims to compare these four assessment systems, particularly focusing on urban biodiversity point of view. As a result, two systems, SEGES and ABINC, take the educational role into account for assessment, as well as the quality and quantities of green spaces. Meanwhile, the other two systems, TEAM and JHEP, consider only quantities and qualities. As urban greens have the role in promoting public awareness of the importance of biodiversity for urban residents, it is desirable to take the educational role into consideration for assessment systems, as well.

Although there are several researches having tried to reveal environmental factors which have something to do with precursor events of sex crimes, there is no research considering possibilities that the degree of effects which some factors have may depend on characteristics of districts and that structure of road network may be relevant with occurrence of such events, both of which have already been pointed out in some researches regarding other crimes. In this research, we analyzed the effect of a variety of factors on precursor events which have occurred in the past three years by using multilevel model to detect factors that have an effect through all districts. In addition, using a method called Urban Network Analysis, we found an effect of street network structure on precursor events.

In this research, we focus on the relationship between planning and installation of GI by public institutions and charitable foundations in Detroit, MI. In Upper Rouge Tributary GI with large capacity of water storage functions to cope with serious CSOs has been installed by the initiative of the city department. On the other hand, experimental GI are developed as a part of transformation of vacant lots in Near Eastside by local NPOs with the support from foundations. Charitable foundations focus on supporting installation activities in the area with GI plan by NPOs or the city. District scale GI planning based on the actual situation of the area influences foundations and their form of support.

In many provincial cities of Japan, there has been decentralization of urban functions due to expansion of urban area and suburbanization. As a solution to such a situation, there has been an effort to promote cities as a hub through implementing a compact city policy, however, it is not based on scientific evidence. For the future policies, it is required to demonstrate evidence by obtaining induction and formation process of cities and building stocks in the past. Therefore, this study focused on the real property registration information as an evidence to describe the actual condition of buildings that were constructed in the past. As the result of this study, the behavior and actual condition of a city was demonstrated in a quantitative way.

Relocation-promotion policy with subsidy can be a realistic option to make future Japanese cities compact, and we analyze the policy using stated preference survey (N=94) in Kumamoto, Japan. We found that respondent will agree on the provision of increased subsidy if we explain why compact city is important. Then we built a binary logit model of relocation behavior incorporating subsidy as policy variable. We also found no statistical significant difference between price elasticity of housing rent and that of subsidy.

In 1894 the city of Hirosaki leased the site of Hirosaki Castle from the government and opened a public park. It was administered by the Tsugarus, descendants of the former feudal lords. This paper examines the ownership and administration of the park. In 1896 an army division was stationed near Hirosaki, and the Tsugarus petitioned, unsuccessfully, to exchange some land for the castle site. In 1898 part of the park again came under the control of the Ministry of War, and in 1902 the Tsugarus stopped their administrative role. They severed their ties with the castle site, judging it too difficult to acquire. The city of Hirosaki then administered the park, purchasing the land in 1906. One reason was to erect a bronze statue of a former feudal lord.

In 1894 the city of Hirosaki opened a park on the site of Hirosaki Castle. This paper examines how park construction was advanced by the visits in 1908 of the Crown Prince and in 1915 of the Emperor. Before the Crown Prince's visit the castle gates and bridges were repaired and repainted. The ground was leveled and lawns and rest areas installed. Overall park refurbishment occurred before the Emperor's visit. The collapsed stone walls, left untouched previously, were rebuilt and the castle tower returned to its original location at great expense. The moat was dredged, the castle gate and enclosing buildings repaired, roads and drainage ditches built, and wooden fences and hedges put in place. Some said the improvements lacked the elegance of the original castle ruins.

This study aims to understand how the lifestyle of people who live in Takashimadaira housing complex have changed. To this end, the changes of the number and the distribution of non-residential facilities on the housing complex were examined by the facilities list printed on the local information magazines called Takashimadaira Benri-cho. <br>As a result, by type of industry classification, retail shops and service industry facilities decreased, and medical and health related facilities tended to increase. The decrease in retail shops was due to the decrease in eating and drinking establishments, and the increase in medical and health related facilities was due to the increase in facilities for acupuncture and moxibustion and care facilities. In areas away from the center of Takashimadaira station, grocery stores and other items declined, and eating and drinking establishments and medical and health related facilities increased. These results suggest that the use diversion from grocery stores to restaurants and medical and health related facilities is progressing in these areas.

Recently in Japan, intercultural policies that help to enhance communication between immigrants/refugees and local society are required, because of internal globalization. Focusing on a project in Germany called the intercultural garden (IG), which aims to integrate immigrants/refugees into local society, this paper reveals the status and social backgrounds of the establishment of the IG to consider its application in Japan. The results show that the IG originated as a grassroots activity by locals, and then eventually expanded across Germany through the efforts of the supporting organization. Our case study in Hanover indicated that Igs play a role as places for intercultural integration, but face the problem of a lack of participation by local Germans. It is also suggested that the role of the supporting organization and incentivizing the participation of local people are important when introducing Igs to Japan.