Differences of the housing market structure in Tokyo and suburbs of Tokyo are examined. Special attention is paid to the effects of property characteristics on the similarity between properties. In Tokyo, the walking time to the nearest railway station, the availability of garage space and the necessity of setback have considerable impacts on the similarity. On the contrary, in suburbs of Tokyo, the age of the property, the accessibility to the CBD, the designated floor area ratio and the land use are important to the similarity. The size of the property, the width of the road in front of the property, whether the property is newly built, the structure, the direction of connecting roads and the irregularity of the lot have comparable effects on the similarity in both areas.

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In the promotion of the seismic retrofit of wooden dwellings, it appears that assistance measures taken by only governments are insufficient in many regions. As can be seen from the advanced cases, local groups such as community based associations, industrial schools, universities and local societies of architects can play essential roles if they work together effectively. My study team implemented a questionnaire survey on antiseismic reinforcement in a congested residential district in Hikone City; it examined the possibility for industrial school students to make simple diagnoses for earthquake protection in response to residents' requests and to lead residents to accept retrofit works.

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Reconstruction process of devastated urban area after the 2001 Gujarat Earthquake was investigated. The feature of this earthquake reconstruction is as follows;(1) It is promoted by improving administrative ability by setting up the Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority and regional development authorities,(2) In the center part of the urban area, reconstruction has just begun, and it took a long time to plan,(3) It tries to make the dangerous situation in the central high density area safe by the readjustment of town lots and planning partial relocation sites.

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Uryudo (Higashi Osaka City) is a typical densely area with wooden houses that's been around for over forty years. The purpose of this paper is to examine how much the residents and the apartment owners realize about the danger of houses in this area.
At first, we investigated housing maps for forty years to grasp the change of this area. After that, we surveyed the households (apartment house and detached house residents) and apartment owners by questionnaires. The results are as follows:
1) Many of the apartment houses in Uryudo were built in the 1960's, and the area consists of many aged people now.
2) Many residents realize the danger of houses, but they still choose to live there because the rent is very economical and the area is convenient.
3) Apartment owners have knowledge of the instability of the houses, but they have little intention to renovate or move them.

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In this paper, I study on multiple factors for housing reconstruction activities of suffered families, based on findings of interviewing research in Degirmendere after Marmara Earthquake, Turkey, on August 1999. First of all, I construct framework of causal relations for housing reconstruction as a hypothesis, based on Family Stress Theory. Second, I examine the relationship between economical, social resources and housing reconstruction activities after drawing a series of disaster processes about damage and much stress on evacuation-prefabricated housing. Finally, the multiple factors of housing reconstruction activities are analyzed by qualitative analysis through the relation between the stressor, mobilized resources, and the evaluation for their activities.

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This study aims at the examining the valuation method of leasehold in the UK. The enfranchisement price is valuated through the income approach The value depends on the ground rent and the remaining term of the lease. When the ground rent is low and the remaining term is long, the price becomes relatively low. When the remaining term is short, the price becomes relatively high. Leaseholder would buy the freehold as soon as possible. Generally the enfranchisement price is low compared with the land value with fixed term lease in Japan.
The vanishing right has no incentive to maintain the living environment. It may cause a social problem. Both leasehold in the UK and the fixed term land lease in Japan have the same defect. Leaseholder has got the new selection to buy the freehold at the low cost. On the other hand, fixed term land tenant does not have the choice.

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This study examines the roles of local community management associations at Brentham Garden Suburb in the UK. Its objective is to learn essence of the management system of housing environment by local community management associations that may be applicable to Japan. In this regard, the study is carried out to clarify residents' evaluation on housing environment and the local community management association at the housing area via the case study at Brentham Garden Suburb.
The study found that the residents tended to positively evaluate the activities of the association for maintaining landscape and housing environment. It implies that establishment of the management system is important for Japan, in which the management association has a right to participate in a planning and landscaping permission process at the same level as the residents and local authority.

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This paper aims to investigate the characteristics of the “Socially Integrative City” program (So=iale Stadt in German) in Erfurt as a city of former East Germany. Soziale Stadt was established as a joint program of the federation and the states in 1999. Its purpose was to vitalize local community at district level by building partnership among local governments and citizen and fostering citizen's initiatives. The program integrated physical, economic, social and cultural measures.
The paper studies the case of Magdeburger, an inner city district in Erfurt. Interviews to district managers and other key persons, observations of meetings, and reviews of public documents were carried out from October 2004 to March 2005 and September 2005.
The main findings are as follows. 1) There are some basically differences in the precondition (ex. scale of city, social and economical condition) between East and West Germany. 2) The maintenance of the physical environment and the organization of the inhabitant are regarded as one good result. 3) The participation has some problems such as a representation and commission of the citizen association, which was established in this program. However, continuous investigations on the effect and problem of the program are necessary.

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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the future renewal-policy orientations of suburban detached-house estates developed in a high-growth period, by conducting field surveys on Hitachi-city-the company city of Hitachi, Ltd. We examined suburban detached-house estates concerning the formation process, the actual conditions and evaluation of living environment by residents. Our results clarified the following points: 1) the local government and the affiliated firms of Hitachi, Ltd. had played importan roles in supplying lots of suburban detached-house stocks. 2) the majority of residents want to continue living at the current properties, but the sustainability of everyday life of elderly people in the suburban detached-house estates is seriously concerned because of the problems accompanied with aging, slopes in the estates and decrease in the level of convenience in daily life or shopping. 3) it is expected that lots of vacant lots and vacant houses will appear in the inconvenient estates located in the hillsides.

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The paper reports on the result of research of the conditions about blank lots and empty houses in suburban areas located in Nagoya area. Many housing areas had been developed in 1960's to 1970'sthere. Nowadays, it is doubted that they are sustaining sociably and environmentally, because the population of most of all are deceasing. Some important facts are revealed through the research of 50 housing areas:(1) the average of ratios of blank lots is 14.3% in Kani and 9.5% in Tajimi,(2) the average of ratios of empty houses is 1.2% in Kani and 0.8% in Tajimi, lower than blank lots (3) Two of three blank lots are abandoned, but some areas use them as cooperative parking lots operated by communities to make up for the shortage of private parking (4) The relationship of the levels of dwelling environment and ratios of blank lots are found out partially (5) High ratios of blank lots does not necessarily mean declining of the areas by now. However some areas are rapidly decreasing the number of households, and then, the ratios of empty houses may be important indicator ofdeclining or un-sustainability of the area.

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In this district, the families where three generations live together in one house used to be typical, but these days the style of livingnext door is often seen. The aim of the research is to make it clear how the change proceeds and what has caused the change. The summary of this research is as follows:
The style of parents and their family living separately has rapidly increased from 1970's (50 percent) to 1980's (86 percent). During this period, many of living together in one house had changed into living next door.
Three factors are considered as the reason of increasing of living next door.
1) Psychological factor: removing psychological frustration and living frustration which is caused by the deference of their living time
2) Inducing factor: economical factor of economical independence, and the housing lot
3) Promoting factor: the resolution of the problem between a bride and a mother-in-law

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The Purpose of this study is verify the movable storing furniture in the SI (Skeleton and Infill) housing by examining the way of living in the Flex Court Yoshida. The results are as follow; 1) The Flex Court Yoshi da has variable plans for the dwellers can easily image there space by using the movable storing furniture as partition. 2) In space usage, although separated bedroom space is available some residents slept at ope n space (not divided by partition). This was not also considered in the beginning.

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Ueno is known as a subsisting place for homeless people (per se rough sleepers or unsheltered homeless people); however, there has been no credible field survey on their living situations and how they ended up coming to Ueno. This research aims to apprehend living situations of homeless persons in Ueno through two surveys-an enumeration survey and a interview survey on 215 homeless individuals; the latter is the principal part of this study. In the interview, questions were asked, such as how their housing conditions used to be, why they chose Ueno to live and what they thought they needed to end homelessness.

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We studied on the actual demands of the town inside residence and a future policy subject by the questionnaire survey to all of the condominium residents that it is built in city center area of Aomori City from 2001, and the circumference city area residents. The maintenance for living environment does not catch up with the increase in the intention for moving to city center are in the local city, and we made clear another new politic problem that vacant houses of the circumference residential section exist in the very high ratio. We can say the important policy subject of the town inside residence to examine the sustainability of the circumference city area, too.

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This paper examines the reasons why people with relatively high income in China steer for buying a commercial housing for their residence through the analysis of their opinions and views as to housing based on the result of questionnaire survey conducted in Amoi City, China in November 2005. This survey addressed to the households of which a head or/and a spouse is/are employee (s) of foreign affiliated companies or private educational organizations. The half of respondents has lived in acommercial housing. Although their satisfaction with a present dwelling is relatively high, it does not mean that they desire to settle down in it for a long period. Ones living in a commercial housing tend to regard the homeownership of a condominium as a form of effective investment. Their views and attitudes toward the purchase of a present home may explain partially the reason why the supply of commercial housing as a form of condominium located in central area has expanded so rapidly despite their aspiration toward the homeownership of a detached house in future.

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The transition of economic society, lead by the economic collapse in the early 90's, made an impact on the transition of urban civilization like “from industrial-society to post industrial-society”, “from urbanizing society to urbanized society” and “from growing society to matured society”. The purpose of this study is to clarify the influence of the changes and diversification of social current on urban and city planning through the analysis of newspaper article in the year of transition.

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The purpose of this paper is to clarify the historical changes of housing policies by Hitachi, Ltd. in the company town Hitachi-city, focusing on company-owned apaitments and dormitories, and to grasp the actual conditions or utilization of old sites of them. We conducted surveys on the details of the documents about construction, demolition and conversion of Hitachi company-owned apartments and dormitories and implemented interviews, in association with Hitachi-Life, Ltd. Our results clarified the followings: 1) we recognize close collaborations of Hitachi-city and Hitachi Ltd. in enforcing the housing policies, particularly both in the post-World War II period when Hitachi-city and Hitachi Ltd. jointly supplied housing to cope with the serious housing shortage, and in the high-growth period when Hitachi Ltd. follow the government's housing policy that promotes home ownership by providing housing loan and suburban detached house estates: 2) company-owned apaitnients and dormitories were mostly constructed along with factories, but their construction were implemented in a stepwise manner in accordance with the expansion of production scale in core factories: 3) there are still lots of company-owned apartments and dormitories around new or large factories, and the rate of vacancy varies a lot: 4) as for the utilization of old sites, detached house estates were developed at good locations around factories, and commercial facilities were developed alongside arterial roads.

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The number of elderly people is increasing rapidly but the rental housing supply for them is still very small in the housing market. The government program “Superior Quality Rental Housing for Elderly People (SQRHEP)” started in 1998. SQRHEP housing are supplied by the private sector or land owners but governed as public housing for the first 10-20 years. The residents are elderly people moved from other places and need to make a new community. Common spaces in collective housing are useful for promoting formation of communities, and in this housing project, construction cost of the common space is subsidized for by the government. To clarify the actual condition of common space and its use in SQRHEP housing, the author inspected 19 SQRHEP housing and had an interview with the owners, superintendents and Life Support Advisers. This paper discovered that (i) There are many good ideas for utilizing the common spaces to create communities in SQRHEP housing. For example, community rooms, common corridors, chat corners, common vegetable gardens and so on.(ii) Almost all SQRHEP housing have community rooms and some of them employ LSAs. LSAs are helpful in promoting active usage of the community rooms by the residents.

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The purpose of this study is (1) to investigate how dwellers encourage the sense of “group territoriality” in three types of houses-dormitory, collective house and one-bedroom apartment,(2) to obtain suggestions for the architectural planning of houses for small-size households.
The results are summarized as follows. 1) Dwellers of one-bedroom apartments hardly have the sense of group territoriality because of the lack of neighborhood community, but the Collective house and the dormitory bring up the strong sense of it. 2) Most of dwellers in the Collective house show similar attitude and intention, that is, the group-oriented behaviors. 3) The dormitory is similar to the Collective house, butit has some flexibility to accept individual-oriented dwellers. 4) As for the survey, three types of houses have clear different tendencies toward the group territoriality.

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This study analyzes residents' evaluation on the opening of fence movement and the af fecting factors which promote to demolish housing fences from the viewpoint of community activation. The results include that over 70% of the residents who actually participated in the fence opening movement show positive evaluation on performance of the activity, and 90% of them show interest in the campaign program of opening fence movement. On the contrary, the residents who live in the candidate areas for the opening fence movement are afraid of the fence opening program. Besides subsidy from administration, height of fence, land price, building coverage ratio are the key elements for the opening of fence.

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A lot of timeworn row-house “Nagaya” remains in the area close to Nagoya station. In this paper, the first, the business on “Nagaja” after it become vacant are economically simulated and verified, compared with actual situation “Nagaya” business in this area. The secondary, the four business and architectural proposal for continuous use and rebuilding of “Nagaya” are modeled, verified economically, and evaltat eel by the owners of “Nagaya”. One of the important viewpoints of these models is that the residents living in “Nagaya”, especially eiderl ypeople, can continue to live in their current houses or in this area even after it is repaired or rebuild. Some owners are inter es tedin these proposal and evaluated positively. In addition, it also found out that it is necessary for a third party to support to improve the issies aourd “Nagaya” business.

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This study wants to discuss for solution asymmetric information in used housing market. Especially we pay attention to disclosure on offering stage in used housing market. The reason is the gap of information between seller and buyer, also the gap of information among intermediations on offering stage.
The research aims to compare 1993 with 2002 advertisements of used condominium. The findings of the research become clear unchanged quantity and quality of information about used condominium for seven years. It is very important for buyer to know the structure and the maintenance information of condominium, but seller offers without enough information in used housing market of Japan. To establish the system ofinformation about structure and maintenance is expected for solution asymmetric information in used housing market.

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The purpose of this study is to analyze the role which the social rented housing has performed in Japan and explore the possibility of the Japanese housing policy to place more importance on using the social rented housing for households with vulnerable persons and households with urgent needs to move, than ever. Such policy, however, tends to create the poverty trap which is indigenous to the residualization of welfare. What causes this problem in Japanese housing policy is mainly the gap of rents between the private sector and the social sector, which is larger in inner-city area. There is substantial need for intermediate affordable housing options. And the Japanese scheme of admission to the social rented housing, the characteristic of which is being based on the draw, has proved to be the cause of unfairness among low-income households and the difficulty to let in households with urgency. The anomalies can also be the threshold to the poverty trap, and would not be resolved unless the admission scheme is converted into such a scheme that households with priority needs are secured with appropriate accommodations.

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