Abstract: Recently, workers in the metropolitan area of Japan increase their interest in moving to rural area after their retirement, and local governments attempt to utilize the knowledge and experiences of city movers in order to activate the local economy. However, mismatches between needs of movers and supports by local government are so serious that the movement does not happen more than we expected. In this paper, we explore causes of the mismatch by analyzing city workers surveys, local government policy surveys and data on socioeconomic factors at prefectural level. We point out that arousing interest in rural life and determining the way tolive in rural areas are another. The results suggest to policy makers that clarifying aim, target and merit of moving to rural area is crucial to promote the city-rural movement more effectively.

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The study, done in November, 2009, is to assess the situation of school preparedness for earthquake disaster in Shiga prefecture. Here we primarily focused on a school zone because the potential which school has for earthquake disaster is enormous and where the weak school students spend most of their time in large units. In addition, school is widely expected to be an immediate and long-time evacuation site for local residents when disaster strikes. Our research results found some facts that level of school preparedness today against earthquake disaster is subject to the difference of teaching systems of elementary school and junior high school, or that school’s awareness of disaster mitigation actually varies with position, gender, and field of school teacher. Therefore, it should be urgently and vitally important to develop an efficient system that can bridge these discrepancies first thing to function school preparedness for earthquake disaster well.

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Recently,the bases supporting daily living can be found in some public housings in Japan. It is run not only for the residents in the public housing but also the neighboring community. Then, in this research, two case studies are done to verify the bases’s roles and effects. Firstly, the trend on the bases twenty cases collected nationwidely are confirmed. Secondarily, the case of Kengun public housing built by Kumamoto pref are verified. Finally, it can be pointed out that the formation of the main base and the substitutional bases established with the existing network in the neighborhood works to meet the residents' demands.

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The purpose of this study is to examine the condition of the land readjustment project that improves the land condition based on the resident’s demand and agreement. The concern is the change of resident’s way of living in land readjustment project. The resident's way of living accompanies the hierarchy. This study examined the resident's demand who accompanied the hierarchy. West Mizue district is a case where the small-scale residential development is improved by the land readjustment project. But, the project was rather brought the density, and did not result in the improvement of the living environment. In this research, two conclusions of this problem were obtained. (1) There is incompleteness in the design standard of the land readjustment project that arranges a small-scale housing lot in a big city block. (2) The scheme that hears the resident’s essential demand is necessary.

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Many long-term patients in psychiatric hospitals might be discharged if they could have got a suitable accommodation together with sound living environment and necessary social supports. Taking it into consideration, this study intends to clarify dwelling conditions of people with mental disability and considers effective measures to ensure them of a better housing. We addressed two sorts of questionnaires to the several medical institutions in order to grasp their efforts in this field and dwelling conditions of their former inpatients. The result indicates the followings: 1) There is a strong correlation between the number of measures taken by each institution and dwelling conditions of their former inpatients, 2) Among others, both making a list of available rental housing and the sublease of existing private rental units are effective as measures, 3) The concerns with both housing needs of their inpatients and the role of the built environment tend to increase in proportion to the institution’s efforts to ensure their patients of an access to housing.

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Using a questionnaire survey dataset with 4,120 respondents, this paper examines the impacts of individuals' attributes on their preferences to various Quality of Life factors, as well as whether the actual choices of city reflects their preferences. For QOL factors such as the public transit, access to work, natural environment and clean air/water, satisfaction levels show clear geographical patterns and access-related factors earn high scores in the city center, whereas the nature-related factors are higher in the suburb. In these attributes, correlation between city residents' emphasis on these attributes and satisfaction scores are high, suggesting that people can successfully choose the place of living according to their emphases. For other factors, such as childcare/education and other public services provided by the municipalities, residential preferences for and the city’s offerings are rarely aligned. One possible reason is that the information on the level and availability of these services is difficult for prospective residents to know.

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This study captured the necessity to develop housing environment and the challenges for the development of small scale housing to consider approaches toward the implementation of housing and community environment to support aging in place. Questionnaire surveys conducted in two comparative aging communities indicated the living needs to enhance community environment. Observation and interviews defined challenges to promote small scale group livings for the aged. The approaches are as follows: 1) information exchanges with community to know its needs and association among people/organizations, 2) building support system with community for emergency, assistance for the aged, and other needs to be realized in cooperation with community organizations and public administration.

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Architects tend to avoid building houses with locally sourced lumber.This is due to the lack of a system which lumber coordinators can offer information about the marketplace to architects who are interested in using locally sourced lumber.A possible method for architects and lumber coordinators to communicate is through lumber traceability. This paper concerns the accumulation of data and the reliability and ease of use of lumber traceability. Our research was verified in 2010 at Oguni-machi, Kumamoto Prefecture, which has an average Japanese managed forest. QR Codes and RFID tags were used and read using PDAs and the utility of lumber traceability was verified from felled trees through to cut lumber.Going forward, it is necessary to create an environment where anyone can easily make use of this system.

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This study aims to find out the design of the public housing that communication among neighbors is not lost easily. We investigated in the KORI-danchi. The main result that we obtained is as follows.I) While people's life becomes convenient with equipment of an elevator etc., an opportunity to meet with an acquaintance by chance decreases. 2) In order to inherit the inhabitant's communication among neighbors, we need to build space with familiarity, and the mechanism in which people gather, in a housing complex.

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In this paper, needs and requirements to live with cats and dogs of houses are stated. Living with cats and dogs inside house is appeared in these 20 years in Japan. The number of household which would like to live with dog or cat is increased in these years and the markets of this kind of house becomes bigger and bigger. But Japanese culture has no background to live with dogs or cats inside house and there are rejections and troubles to do it. First of all, current situation of housing in Japan is surveyed and Japanese background to live with animals is mentioned. Then fruitfulness of living with a dog or a cat etc. is stated.

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In Yukarigaoka Newtown, land sales remained even after the development company as a management company in Newtown said that business and other services to residents after move-in. Based on this case, the sustainability of the new town, from the perspective of developers to consider developing a new town to operate.

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The purpose of this study is to develop the supporting database for management of agreement for the residents. This paper examines the necessary information to the supporting database from the questionnaire for the residents, and plot out the supporting database by assuming the use in the residential area of the case study. The results show that necessary information are the observance of agreement of each house, how to and when to pruning and disinfection, and views of the street in residential area. And the use of the supporting database in the management of the agreement is assumed to be different from the residents.

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The park reconstruction by being transplanted save Tall existing trees, residents have not been highly acclaimed. However，this tree form of trees transplanted rich landscape of trees to save the entire complex and that recovery is made, also the proper management of trees, green environmental assessment of aging has been suggested that the residents are 90 and continues to be high. In addition to the increased awareness that even more than green and green surroundings, is also increased with age of various green rating, residents have been enhanced by beautiful green landscape of trees believed that many have been evaluated.

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The paper aims at finding characteristics of information disclosure of condominiums which hold relatively high property values even after some decades by introducing appropriate care and management of facilities after construction. Some condominiums in Kansai region are extracted by regression analysis on property values and details of methods of information disclosure are clarified by interview survey on these condominiums. It is found that desirable disclosure of information is largely attributed to the capacity of directors of administration associations, who have expertise regarding condominiums and real estates.

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The study has aimed to implement qualitative evaluation of the living environment focusing on mixed use communities from the relation with both mixed use ratio and resident’s satisfaction. Four urbanized districts in Taipei City were taken up as research fields. In each district vertical mixed use is shown in many located buildings which generally have non-dwelling facilities in lower storey and housings in upper storey. In conclusion, firstly, mixed use ratio 27% in Dongqu shows a certain measure to define what is needed for an appropriate living environment. Secondly, convenience in urban living such as close to shopping and serviceable traffic is highly evaluated in qualitative evaluation of mixed use. Thirdly, from the point of making multi-habitat townscape, ground and lowerstory floors which should be used for commercial and small industries are designed set back or set forth than more high floors.

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Questionnaire survey reveals that over 40% of housing estates in Saitama Prefecture face disappearance of shopping facilities, less two-generation living, and weed in vacant lots. Also, housings and its surroundings may yield problems in near future, if maintenance activities are not well done. Countermeasures to cope with existing and future problems of housing estates are mostly proposed. Some proposed measures to sustain housing estates are not directly related to these problems. Although anti-crime activities conducted by neighborhood associations are considered effective; other proposed measures are considered less effective. Therefore, municipalities should have sufficient meetings with residents to apply measures and review of measures if necessary.

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The purpose of this study is to clarify the issues and challenges in developing the future distribution policy for existing homes in Hokkaido by introducing the review process and outline of the "Hokkaido R Housing System." This is a new policy for the distribution of the existing homes in Hokkaido and verification of the system by examining the opinions of the residents and buyers of houses whose renovations < made between 2009 and 2011 > used the system. Hokkaido R Housing，"for the purpose of renovating existing homes" that were built under the initiative of the Hokkaido Government, has the following contents: home inspectors will conduct the current status survey of such homes and record the results; on the basis of these inspection results, renovation works will be carried out in order to enhance housing performance. Historical records will be maintained of the works undertaken, ensuring the possibility of showing the housing quality after the renovations. Further, long-term housing loans can be provided, regardless of the age of the homes. Hokkaido R Housing is a comprehensive approach for the entire region, which is in collaboration with home renovation firms, realtors, professional engineers, associations, banks, and the Hokkaido administration.

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This paper aims to reveal how to deal with the issues existing in first generation large scale public housing complexes. As many first generation public housing complexes have, Tokiwadaira has various issues such as aging of residents, decrepit building, the decline of shopping cades,lack of parking, etc. In Tokiwadaira, the plan for rebuilding the housing was called off， and the public housing has been kept since 1960. In examination, it is treated how Public corporation and Matsudo city and residents' association have kept in good repair for Tokiwadaira. It is verified on urban traffic, physical aging, residents’changing, and neighborhood institution. Analyzing the points of these maintenances will offer hint to success of the next project for the public housing regeneration.

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Recently, common space assuming residential maintenance is built in a part of public housing complex. The purpose of this study is to clarify the present conditions of the action in such a common space and the problem of management. The main findings are as follows: 1) It is important to find the member to participate in the activity. For this, it is necessary to build relationships with existing organizations, to discover new person through fun, and to work in cooperation with the surround area. 2) Regional activity generates cost. It is necessary to collect money in the area, to earn the money in community business, or to delegate the maintenance common space to residential organization.

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This paper reports on the realities of housing supply policies for the sufferers of the Great East Japan Earthquake based on field survey. Responding to the Great East Japan Earthquake, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism established its disaster headquarters on March 11 and takes every measure for rescuing the sufferers, and rendering assistance to them, restoring and reestablishing infrastructure including roads, railways, ports and airports, and accelerating the delivery of housing supplies to the affected areas. This report reveals emergency temporary housing supply policies for the sufferers and some issues in the middle of promoting supply of emergency temporary houses, utilization of public and private houses by municipalities. It also considers assistance for rebuilding houses and rehabilitation of the afflicted communities separating on the several types of affected areas.

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The purpose of this study is to examine how the residents in Cohousing practice the childcare by using the common space and what this activity means to the residents and the community. Trillium Hollow Cohousing, which is an example of this study, has 9 families who have children, and most of the parents have full time jobs. With regard to the cooperative childcare, the parents practice the following activities in the common space. 1) Common Meal, 2) After School Program, 3) Events. Practicing these activities brings significant meanings to the residents. For example, the children learn how to discuss and plan the events cooperatively. Also, the cooperative childcare helps the parents to decrease the burden concerning the childcare and reflect the way to raise the children. Furthermore, the cooperative childcare contributes to creating the whole community. This study will be a good example for the collective housing, which is the same living style and is currently developing in Japan, and also show that the cooperative childcare helps to build and sustain the community.

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