In recent years, shared autonomous vehicle (SAV) services have expanded with the expectation of reducing traffic congestion and environmental loads. Nevertheless, SAV might induce greater amounts of traffic from public transportation and instead worsen congestion and environmental loads. The objective of this study is to support the introduction of traffic planning and SAV in a city. This study proposed a new model to calculate changes of travel distance of vehicles by introducing SAV based on population density and car mode shares. Application of this model to national/global cities revealed that 1) in transit-oriented cities such as Tokyo, the travel distance of vehicles might increase because of traffic induced from public transportation. 2) In some car oriented cities such as Chicago and heavily populated cities such as Taipei, increased travel distance of vehicles can be suppressed or reduced.

This study examined how we can connect site-scale green infrastructure (GI) projects to city-scale GI strategies by studying the “New GI” projects in the Upper Rouge Tunnel area in the City of Detroit, Michigan, USA. The results show that linking the two scales requires much networking and collaboration with various stakeholders. Toolkit, based on a city-scale plan, which facilitates site-scale implementation and a resident engagement campaign are useful mechanisms that help strengthen the link between the two scales. Even though the New GIs are rather high-profile projects with much funding from philanthropic foundations, for it to be successful many networking events and residents’ participation are crucial with the financial and logistical support from the city department and the foundations.

Visual green rate is widely used in planning for promoting greening in densely built-up residential areas. However, a method for measuring visual green rate from omnidirectional camera images, which has a potential to capture wider variety of greening types, has not been established. We measured the visual green rate from the image taken with ordinal digital camera and omnidirectional camera and examined the usefulness of two methods by comparing with the actual perceived greenery by the impression evaluation survey. As a result, it was suggested that measurement of visual green rate by omnidirectional camera has a potential as an effective means to capture the difference in green amount at block level.

This study aims to clarify the development in Yato residential area in Kamakura in the recent years and the change of its space configuration. Yato residential area is surrounded by hills and abundant in green which provides great residential environment. But, these days the increase of site division influences the space configuration of this area. This configuration is characterized by tall trees surrounding houses and the use of natural materials such as wooden fences and stone bases. Comparing the area where development has progressed with the area where it has not, there is a big difference in the proportion of green coverings and the use of natural materials. In addition, through the detailed analysis of the area where development has progressed, differences are seen for each newly built dwelling unit, and various types of external structure are mixed.

In this paper, we have examined and confirmed the effectiveness of public involvement in three selected railway projects to improve usability. These are the Hankyu Itami station project, Fukuoka Nanakuma subway line project, and Sendai Tozai subway line project. First, we analyzed their approach and process through stakeholder interviews and a literature review. Then, we carried out satisfaction surveys to collect voices of passengers, including both persons with and without mobility difficulties. Through the survey, first, we have found that persons with mobility difficulties benefit more from accessible facilities planned via public involvement. Second, accessible facilities continue to provide accessibility over time. Judging from our findings, we support public involvement as being an effective approach to improving usability.

In a population declining society, it is necessary to expand the community design to multiple region. At that time, regional characteristics in terms of community participation activities by residents are also required. This study of aims to devise the method of understanding regional characteristics by composition of Residents' Type by regional participation situation, and to discuss the effectiveness by comparing the results grasped by this method and the regional situation is there. Although it was not possible to clarify the effectiveness of this method in terms of the activities of NPO corporations and citizen activity group, it was learned that this method is effective in terms of activities of neighborhood associations and residents' association.

Heritage along once flourished historic highways are often lost due road widening projects as most of them are still the shortest routes that connect important places today. This survey focuses on Old Tokaido, one of the five highways that connected Edo Tokyo and cities around Japan, that still serves as a major corridor connecting towns between Tokyo and Kyoto. It explores to what extent the post towns and the road between them are conserved as historic highway landscape and discuss what kind of conditions are necessary for the conservation. The walking survey was conducted for the entire length of Old Tokaido to collect data on the conditions of roads and historical townscapes. The result is shown in the form of matrix categorizing the segments of Old Tokaido according to walkability and development pressure.

Condominiums have been a major tenure status in metropolises, while recent population shrinkage sheds lights on its sustainability—whether they continue to attract new residents. Exploiting a detailed questionnaire survey for buyers of newly-built condominiums, we investigate the long-run trends of the preferred residential environment across the Tokyo metropolitan area. We find that new residents from outside of the city tend to put an emphasis on the living environment of the neighborhood etc., and that the trend is recently becoming more prominent in the suburbs. We also find that the criterion serves as a critical determinant to finally choose the specific property/location, among the factors initially taken into consideration. The spatial distribution of the subjective residential environment shows that not all the suburban areas have advantages on the desired criteria while the relative strength of the neighborhood remains stable over time. The results imply that the existing suburban condominiums may need some adjustment to gain future inflows.

The purpose of this study is to clarify the factors and issues in selecting methods for building a social educational facilities in Sendai City, by investigating the method of building construction. The result of interview survey and literature survey show follows. There are many large-scale repairs, and offices were located in nearby public facilities during construction. Also, the reason why there were few rebuilding on the same land is considered to be that the location closer to other public facilities compared to before. We concluded that city authorities position social educational facilities as regional base facilities without any explicit writing.

In Iwate and Fukushima prefecture, either a prefecture or a municipality is responsible for development and management of disaster recovering public housing of the Great East Japan earthquake. In this research, we aim to clarify the differences in the difficulty and issues in community formation and the establishment of community organizations by responsible entities, from a case study of Otsuchi town, Kamaishi city and Rikuzentakata city in Iwate prefecture. From the interview and questionnaire survey to residents in two disaster recovery public housings, we found that he disaster recovering public housing developed and/or managed by a prefecture faces more difficulties in the formation of community and establishment of community organizations. It is because the design and management are same as other prefecture public housing, the size is larger, and the provision of residents' personal information to supporting organization is difficult, etc.

Lots of disaster remains were produced due to the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Several arguments, for example, about if they should be remained for the future or how to keep them, went on to be settled. This paper aims to arrange the whole picture of disaster remains produced in Japan since the 1891 Great Nobi Earthquake and to obtain useful information to manage them. As a result, 218 remains were collected caused by 22 disasters and the WWII, including 124 cases of atomic bombs, 78 cases of the earthquake, 14 cases of eruption and 3 cases of wind and flood damage. They were classified into five categories in form and four management system to understand chronological trend. It also analyzes project cost and maintenance cost for preservation.

In this paper, the region along a road as a unit for GIS data is considered and the number of households along roads are estimated through the use of free GIS datasets. For these estimations, the methods of areal weighting interpolation are comparatively discussed. For the areal weighting interpolation, a Voronoi diagram is generated from the centerlines of a road network. The methods are practically applied into the two residential districts in Okazaki city, and the results of the interpolation have proved to be meaningful especially in the case of Tatsumi-higashi 2 chome. It is also mentioned that the areal interpolation weighted by estimated building floor areas can be more useful than that by region areas.

In recent years, an increasing number of libraries are offering a space that breaks the traditional library concept of "reading in a quiet space". In this study, we refer to "space where users can freely and actively participate in a variety of activities while enjoying a rich and relaxing atmosphere." as "free space", and focus on libraries with free space. The purpose of this study is to clarify the relationship between the characteristics of facilities such as location and the existence as well as content of free space in the building. The results are as follows. There was no correlation between the location of the library and the existence of free space in the library or the content of the free space. In contrast, there was a correlation between the size of the library as well as the year of construction and the existence of free space. In addition, although there was a tendency for the central library in each city to have free space, the amount of free space in the central library was not related to the size of the central library.

Possibly people feel characteristics and nostalgia in a certain town because there are features on the landscape very different from other towns, and the people see it over and over again. Therefore, this study focused on advertisements in front of the station, and searched for the factors that brought such characteristics by railway lines. The survey targets were stations on the Keio Sagamihara Line and Tobu Tojo Line. As a research method, we took photos in front of all stations and analyzed the number of advertisements and the ratio of colors. As a result, both lines had common characteristics in the up and down directions with a certain station as a boundary. On Keio Sagamihara Line, the opening year affected the station's character, and on Tobu Tojo Line, the number of passengers affected it.

These days, many local municipalities institute their urban facility location plan for improving their urban structure. However, the spatial distribution of persons who live in Chiba city and use city centers is not considered in their location plans, which may lead to inappropriate policies. In this study, we have visualized the spatial distribution of persons using city centers in Chiba city by GPS analysis and have recognized its characteristics focusing on persons flow and locations of city centers. It is found that it is able to visualize the areas of city centers and inconvenient areas for using a city center based on a bottom-up approach. Results show that those areas don’t depend on a distance to the city center only. In addition to it, it is found that the total number of visitors to centers of several city structures can be evaluated on the basis of city center users’ distribution. That makes it possible to compare a city structure with another one in terms of the total number of city center users and to propose a new city structure.

This article discusses the possibility of changes in the methods and contents of urban planning surveys as image recognition technologies quickly advance, and later introduces a result of preparatory survey of people's place perception and a method to collect urban images. In urban planning, the use of image recognition technologies may (1) increase the efficiency and at the same time reduce the cost of land use and building surveys, (2) increase the frequency of vacant house surveys, and (3) make it possible to investigate how objects in public and private spaces affect people’s perception of place. As for the human perception of place, the preparatory survey showed that specific kinds of objects on streets attracted attentions, and objects that need to be detected from the urban scape images were selected based on the result. Finally, Image acquisition method is also described.

The area requirements for the production green area can be changed by the revision of the production green area law. In addition, several small farms can be designated as a group of production green areas. Up to now, the designation has been lifted if the road requirement is below the area requirement. From now on, small-scale farmland that is less than the area requirement will also be designated as a production green area. When receiving designations in multiple green spaces, the local government will set the distance limit between farmland. This time, we measured the distance between target farms in Hino City and Kokubunji City in Tokyo. In addition, the continuity of the green space and the location environment were evaluated. As a result, it was found that there was a distance of 20m to 80m.

Infrastructures developed in the period of high economic growth in Japan have been decayed and facing for urgent renewal. To response to that, in the field of urban park system there is a plan to make a park longer sustained by fixing its utilities. On the other hand, it is crucial to consider administrative cost to keep and maintain not only parks but other infrastructure. This paper proposes sustainable measures for urban park system in terms of not only the cost but users demand for park system, analyzing the population data and the data of park maintenance plan in Sagamihara City, Kanagawa Prefecture. We successfully selected some of the parks which the city should abandon for the sake of public health. In addition, the characteristics of the parks by group were analyzed using SOM. In that, we assumed how to use from facilities, and considered facility items considering future population change based on evaluation of facilities.

The basis of tourism risk management against natural disaster is the "self-help" power of the tourists themselves. In this study, it was investigated the risk awareness of tourists at major beaches along the Sagami Bay coast by focusing on tsunamis among natural disasters. The beach in Shonan had a different user base and the purpose of use according to the place, and this led to the difference of the consideration to the tsunami. Yuigahama, which has many visitors from far away, has found that there is a tendency to have a low sense of land and tsunami when compared to Katase Nishihama and Southern Beaches. It is necessary to cultivate self-help awareness, risk awareness, and correct knowledge of tsunamis on a daily basis through education, regardless of region.

This study deals with the history, policy and practice of tourist information centers (TICs) in central Tokyo in order to develop a planning theory focusing on the perspective of urban facilities such as arrangement and location, architecture and utilization of the private sector. As a result, the following three can be pointed out. Firstly, the definite frameworks are prepared by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and the Japan Tourism Agency for consideration of TICs’ arrangement. Secondly, in terms of architecture planning, the schemes fail to refer anything except for a signboard. Spatial characteristics such as location, façade and facility layout are rather significant to improve tourists’ accessibility and visibility. Lastly, since schemes which aims to maintain the quality of TICs and promote their networking were developed, these can be appreciated in the light of the fact that both public and private sectors have benefited and the number has increased in fact.

Notwithstanding the existence of a system based on the City Planning Act etc. that regulate land use (hereinafter the “City Planning System”), many local governments have adopted their own town planning ordinances. The aim of this paper is to consider the future of such town planning ordinances, through a series of analysis performed on ordinances that feature their own land use restrictions and planning proposal systems, by examining: 1) the planning system created thereunder; 2) land development activities etc. which are subject to notification/consultation thereunder; and 3) treatment of mortgages thereunder. The results of the analysis clearly indicate that town planning ordinances: 1) augment the City Planning System by providing transitional measures that apply until the implementation of the City Planning System, and standing in its place in regions that lack sufficient regulation on land use; 2) should ideally regulate holistically, by addressing the planning system, definition of projects which trigger notification/consultation, as well as treatment of mortgages.

This paper aims to raise issues regarding the public return of development benefit associated with permits for development of urbanization control areas. The Minami-Kawachi area in Osaka Prefecture has many locations with the potential for cohesive development of urbanization control areas therefore, regarding development permits in this area, it is assumed that the land value would become equivalent to an urbanization control area, and the difference in land value is estimated as development benefit. As a result, development benefit reached 31.9 billion yen between 2008-2017. The municipalities in this region face severe financial circumstances due to the declining population and the reduction in taxes. It is considered to be desirable to public return a portion of the development benefit with the special-purpose tax, contributions, and development charges in accordance with the ordinance.