Studies in Regional Science
Online ISSN : 1880-6465
Print ISSN : 0287-6256
ISSN-L : 0287-6256
Volume 10
Displaying 1-13 of 13 articles from this issue
  • Nobuo YASUYAMA, Masuo KASHIWADANI, Mitsuo MIZOHATA
    1979 Volume 10 Pages 1-19
    Published: August 30, 1980
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Japanese local cities have been literally transformed in the last decade. Increased automobile ownership and suburban development are perhaps the most notable features of this transformation. Rapid changes in these features in the same period suggest that there is the close relationship between them and that automobiles have great advantages over transit.
    In Matsuyama we made two investigation studies to examine these suggestions. One was an accessbility study and the other was a land use study. This paper shows the results of them.
    The contents of the advantages shown in the accessibility study are as follows. The average of trip length is so short that people can drive easily. Transit passengers are obliged to take much access time and waiting time in addition to the travelling time, which is usually longer in case of transit than automobiles. The figure of transit network is organized in a radial pattern with poor loop lines against a dense road network. Transit fares are expensive.
    In suburban area we can see many tracts where auto drivers can have high accessibility against low accessibility of transit passengers. The results of the land use study show that the amount of sites developed in such tracts was more than half of the total amount of them developed in the study area between 1970 and 1976. We can see the lower density development in the area where automobiles have more advantages and the higher density development in the area where they have less advantages.
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  • Keiichi SATOH, Hideo IGARASHI
    1979 Volume 10 Pages 21-36
    Published: August 30, 1980
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In country cities, bus service systems are only public traffic facility, which have been contributed to stability of the civic life and development of the city activity. Recently, the more private cars are used, the less bus passengers become. Private cars are main transportation in country cities, so the peoples are widely using them for going to the offices, shopping centers, and hospitals. However, this facts don't mean that the public transportations are not necessary in motorized society. This paper discusses the functions and problems of bus systems in country cities, namely Obihiro city in Hokkaido. For the purpose of comprehending the transportation circumstances in Obihiro city, the person trips investigation was carried out. Consequently, two facts are realized as follows.
    1) Private cars are generally used even in the center of Obihiro where traffic controls are put into practice strongly.
    2) Bus systems are often used by students, housewives, and elders. Especially the systems play an important role for handicapped persons. In Obihiro city, bus systems have lost the role of mass transportation systems already. So, it is desirable that the countermeasures are taken as follows.
    1) reformation of bus route network.
    2) establishment of the bus traffic priority.
    3) construction of bus terminal in Obihiro city.
    4) fitness in the city planning.
    5) estimation of bus service cost and it's shares.
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  • Yoichi UCHIDA
    1979 Volume 10 Pages 37-57
    Published: August 30, 1980
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In order to make well-balanced regional development and to expedite rehabitation of population into rural areas, the overall improvement of rural residential environments based on their local characteristics is a major problem.
    This paper gives special consideration to distribution of advanced educational institutions which is as important as decentralizing of industries, cultural and medical opportunities in rural areas.
    The human resources which support these educational organizations are now centralized in metropolitan areas such as Tokyo and Keihanshin (Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe). Lack of opportunities in rural areas has led millions of young people to large cities which has brought about population density in metropolitan areas and further deterioration of living circumstances in country areas. Therefore, it is essential to provide youth with attractive conditions in rural areas by planning regional relocation of advanced educational organizations which will result in raising the cultural level of these areas.
    This paper analyzes the problem of over-centralization of advanced educational organizations and the needs of residents of outlying cities. At the same time the paper reviews the Ministry of Education's University Location Policy and points out the imbalance between that policy and the needs of residents in the outlying areas.
    In conclusion, this paper refers to the ideal locations of universities and other technical institutes as well as the feasibility of resolving the imbalance and makes several suggestions on the possibility of improving the present policy.
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  • Masahiko KUBA
    1979 Volume 10 Pages 59-69
    Published: August 30, 1980
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The elderly above the age of 65 account for 8.9 percent of the total population of Japan as of September 1979. The percentage of elderly people is estimated to rise further to 13.9 percent in the year 2000 and 18.1 percent in the year 2025 and to remain around the level of 18 percent thereafter, according to the Demographic Research Institute of the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the estimate in the Third General Land Development Plan of the Government of Japan. This means that after the year 2025 one out of five or six would be in their old age.
    Such an increase in the number of the elderly is expected to have a great impact on the socio-economy of Japan. Some of the problem areas requiring policy efforts are as follows:
    (1) Increased burden on the population of working age in terms of contributions to pension and medicare programs and in feeding the elderly.
    (2) Extension of the retirement age and a change in the pay structure based on seniority, which will affect the industrial structure with respect to production and labor force.
    The development of policy measures is urgently needed to cope with these issues anticipated in the near future.
    The social security system in Japan has recently been improved and it is said that the pension system is comparable to those in America or the European countries. However, in other areas of welfare for the elderly, Japan is far behind these countries, partly because the age distribution of the Japanese population has been such as not to make welfare for the elderly a serious issue. In the past, support of the elderly has mostly been borne by individual families in Japan. The recent change in the socio-economic structure, however, has caused increasing uncertainty over life after retirement, increasing demand for the provision of public services and facilities and an increasing role of the government in the field of welfare. There is a need for programs under which retired persons can live in good health and in happiness. These programs should include not only those based on the assurance of purchasing power through the pension system, which is vulnerable to inflation, but also housing, resort and recreational areas, sports facilities, and facilities for education and cultural activities, horticulture and other hobbies. Partly because of apprehension that life after retirement will result in a decline in well-being for the elderly, retirement is generally accepted in Japan with a feeling of sadness. And it seems that friends and kinfolks sometimes feel awkward in dealing with the retire person. In the Western society, however, retirement is commonly considered as the start of an age for pursuing new values in life and is something to be congratulated.
    In order for the common Japanese people to be able to look forward to the day of retirement with hope and to engage with enthusiasm in designing a new life thereafter, it is necessary, as stated before, that facilities appropriate to the life style of the elderly be constructed taking into consideration their reduced physical activity as well as taste or preference and that carefully-designed programs for maintaining their physical and mental health be offered, in addition to the pension and grants. As a concrete program embodying such measures, it is desirable that “Senior Citizens' Towns” be constructed in Japan. The elderly above the age of 65 spent most of their productive years in the ordeals of the War and the difficult time of reconstruction after the War. Consequently their mobility was very much limited, and they have had little opportunity to travel and experience the excitement and pleasure of observing varied natural scenery and social establishments outside their own land. As a result, it is said that they generally tend to become retrogressive and enervate in their old age.
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  • Optimal Control Model of Pollution
    Hirotada KOHNO, Masatoshl YOSHIDA
    1979 Volume 10 Pages 71-102
    Published: August 30, 1980
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In this paper, we have developed and refined one type of the optimal control model which will be intended to control, by means of the allocations of the production factor of ‘capital’, the trade-off type of the stock of pollution in which the substitutability between consumption and the stock of pollution is permitted; and several very interesting analytical results have been obtained.
    Our model is formulated to maximize the functional (12) subject to the capital stock constraint (1), the production function (3), (5), the pollutional flow-discharge function (7), the accumulation-of-pollution equation (9), and the initial condition of the stock of pollution (11-2), as follows:
    Judging from the viewpoint of controlling optimally the stock of pollution, it has become much worth consideration how levels the exogenously given total of capital stock _??_ is to be. There exists a critical level (i.e., X) in the range of _??_. Depending whether the current total of capital stock _??_ may be greater than, less than, or equal to the above-mentioned X, the prescription of the optimal control of the stock of pollution will be expected to diverge in many branches of it.
    The same thing will, of course, be said for the historically given initial level of the stock of pollution also.
    In such a manner, the optimal control of the stock of pollution depending greatly upon the initial level of the given total of capttal stock and the initial level of the stock of pollution, and also depending how these levels are, the desirable policy of the optimal control of pollution has become to vary entirely, sothat it will be necessary to take these points into consideration in order that weshould intend to carry into effect something of the environmental policy for thestock of pollution. practically.
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  • Yasoi YASUDA, Ken WATANABE
    1979 Volume 10 Pages 103-118
    Published: August 30, 1980
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In this paper we make research on an equitable cost allocation of cooperative sewerage system for regional environmental management. We formulate it to apply a characteristic function form game, i.e., a local government is to be assumed a player in the sewerage system game. This game theoritical research is used two kinds of conceptual solution for equity to resolute conflicts among players. Two solutions are Shapley's “Value” and Schmeidler's “Nucleolus”. The empirical study has been done at Lake Kasumigaura where the eutrophycation has been progressing. In comparison with the practical institution, to conclude an equitable cost allocation of regional public goods such as sewerage system we must take spatial location of each local government into account.
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  • Yoshifusa KITABATAKE, Yoji AOKI
    1979 Volume 10 Pages 119-141
    Published: August 30, 1980
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Water Pollution due to organic substances, called eutrophication, has gained growing social concern in a region with a closed water body. It is not only detrimental to withdrawal uses such as municipal water supply, but to in-stream uses such as commeircal fishing. A survey questionaire was undertaken in order to estimate eutrophication-caused damage on fish production on a monthly basis. This survey was carried out as part of the current Kasumigaura Project of N. I. E. S., which is a comprehensive research plan directed at inland waterbody planning.
    The survey was executed from December 1978 to March 1979, where the survey period was four consecutive months, June to September, of 1978. All the fishery households were sampled for the self-reporting survey, who carried out the designated fishing gears of fixed netting, trawl net and carp culture. A total of 489 out of 976 households responded to the questionaire. The items included in the questionaire were: (1) the species composition of the catch and the damage with the specified symptoms such as fish died in net, infected fish, malformed fish, and stinking fish; (2) the fishing effort involved in obtaining the catch and in avoiding the damage.
    The survey results show that fishery households operating either fixed netting or carp culture were affected in terms of the production loss by lake eutrophication more strongly than those engaged in trol netting. Second, the significant mean difference were detected for the average production loss per culture net between fishermen with automatic feeding devices and those feeding with their hands. Third, the regression analysis of the survey data along with the water quality data of Lake Kasumigaura revealed that the damage per catch were positively related to Chlorophyll a data and negatively related to Secchi depth data for fishermen who were actively and in large scale engaged in fixed netting operation.
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  • Seiichi KAGAYA
    1979 Volume 10 Pages 143-166
    Published: August 30, 1980
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Recently the subjects of water resources system have been extremely complex such that methods of water managment involve many problems that have to be solved.
    It is the first purpose of this paper to clarify the structure of water resources system for the regional planners, policymakers and inhabitants. The second purpose is to produce two models: one is the screening model evaluating multiobjectives of regional water resources managment and the other is the synthetic watershed simulation model which is composed of the physical water system, the regional economic system and the political system to make planning decisions.
    The outline of this procedure is as follows:
    1) To apply Fuzzy structural Modeling (FSM) to the regional water resource structure, 2) To decide some feasible control variables of the whole watershed level by the Min-Max model method and 3) To evaluate the alternatives of regional structural or nonstructural measures with the System Dynamics method. The subjects to be accomplished with those measures are water utilization, flood control and water quality control.
    These models were applied to the water resource managment of the Chitose river basin in Hokkaido.
    Several results may be summarized as follows:
    1) The structures as to the relative importance of water resource objectives and those measures in the study area were specified graphically.
    2) The best compromised solution by using of the interactive procedure between the related parametric model and decisionmaker's relative preferences were calculated easily in the water allocation problem.
    3) The process of the regional water resource subjects accomplished with structural, nonstructural or multi-measures combined with these two kinds of measures were evaluated with the dynamic model. Further-more as a result the preferential measure according to the regional developments was found from dozens of alternatives in water resources system.
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  • Shukichi KUNO
    1979 Volume 10 Pages 167-184
    Published: August 30, 1980
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This article deals with practical aspects of regional development.
    It seems that there have been more failures than successes in the history of regional development projects. There are discrepancies between expectations and actual accomplishments. These discrepancies have resulted for the most part from lack of foresight in regard to socio-economic trends and lack of sympathy toward regional problems at the initial stages of planning and execution. In order to point out the main causes of successes and failures of recent development projects, three historical examples have been chosen for case-study.
    1) The Tennessee Valley Authority project in the U.S.A., begun in the 1930's under the New Deal and which has proved to be one of the most successful projects in history.
    2) The Mutsu-Ogawara Development Project, planned and begun around 1970 in Aomori Prefecture, Northern Japan, which is considered to be a partial, if not total, failure, not in keeping with the great expectations of both government and financial authorities.
    3) Various types of rural development projects, planned in oil-rich Iran within the past 30 years, into which vast sums of money have been supposedly invested but which have shown little physical results to date.
    My examination of the foregoing projects has led to the following conclusions.
    1) A sizable budget for regional development dose not necessarily guarantee the success of a project.
    2) Proper timing for the execution of a project is essential. For example, TVA was begun in the midst of the depression and was in full operation during World War II, which can, to a great degree, account for its success. The failure of the Mutsu-Ogawara Project may be largely attributed to the fact that it was started at a time when Japan's economic growth rate had begun to decline.
    3) There must be a good understanding of regional history and culture on the part of the planning authority. For example, the Iranian ruler's ignorance of the cultural characteristics of Islamic people can largely account for the failure of Iranian development projects.
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  • Susumu KASE
    1979 Volume 10 Pages 185-205
    Published: August 30, 1980
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    As an extension of the author's previous study the factor share of land rent was studied in a production function analysis in an effort to discriminate the most effective measure that should be taken to alleviate the grave problem of high land price in Japan.
    In the present analysis the share of land rent in GNP was assumed to be equal to the ratio G of total national land price over GNP multiplied by the interest rate i.
    Results obtained are:
    i) In any economy the factor share Gi of land rent should vary in accordance with changes in the physical make up of social infrastructure and with changes in the land intensiveness of industries.
    ii) The above requirement precludes the use of the Cobb-Douglas function necessitating a recource to the variable factor share type production functions. Attributes of such production functions were clarified.
    iii) Measured data show that the share Gi of land rent is approximately equal in values throughout the 47 prefectures in Japan. The present analysis clarified the mechanism that brings about this tendency.
    iv) It was found that the measure most effective in decreasing the share Gi of land rent thus leading to the practical solution of the high land price problem is to replace the low dencity sprawl prevailing in most big cities in Japan with low cost high rise structures such as the Compact City proposed by Danzig10)
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  • On the Valuation of Public Benefit and Classification of Forests
    Katsuya FUKUOKA
    1979 Volume 10 Pages 207-220
    Published: August 30, 1980
    Released on J-STAGE: October 10, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Forest lands are utilized and managed for a multiplicity of purposes, with usually one use, frequently timber production, dominant on a particular area. Forest lands can often be utilized and managed for several uses, sometimes on the same area and sometimes with different dominant uses assigned to separate areas. Utilization and management of the whole are directed to obtain the total net benefit of forest lands. Forest lands managed primarily for timber production can be frequently, and with comparatively small adjustment, served watershed, wildlife, or recreational purposes. A major use, well managed, often ensures others. In some conditions, the usage of forest lands are incompatible, one with another, and priority decision must be made.
    Japan, compared with western countries, even with asiatic countries having relatively high percentage of forest land, is one of the most forested countries in the world. However, there was no precise knowledge of the effect of forest cover upon environmental supplies. Much has been explained about sustained yield as a major objective of timber management, and it has been regarded as something of a general cureall.
    Environmental stress of forest lands refers to a discordance between man's economic activities and his natural surroundings. The result of the discordance is a deterioration in the quality of the natural surroundings that leads to a reduction in social welfare. The phyical environment and its characteristics have an important influence on the economic and ecological structure of a region. I took a statistical approach, (principal component analysis) to the collection and presentation of envionmental data of forest lands, and indicated the results of valuation and classification of forest lands in Yamagata Prefecture on the use of a map and graphs, to summarize information visually, for easy comparisons among forest lands.
    If the above-mentioned standards of classification of forest lands are supplied by public organizations, they may be possible to indicate the appropriate environmental measures such as the choice species and regeneration procedures.
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  • [in Japanese]
    1979 Volume 10 Pages 221-229
    Published: August 30, 1980
    Released on J-STAGE: October 23, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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  • [in Japanese]
    1979 Volume 10 Pages 231-237
    Published: August 30, 1980
    Released on J-STAGE: October 23, 2008
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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