In Japan, vacant houses have increased and cause various problems. One of the reason why the increase of the vacant houses is insufficient laws, regulation and policies regarding house and real estate to be a stock type society. Policies regarding house, welfare, management and urban planning should be more incorporated to prevent from the increase of vacant houses with efficient measurements.

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The social concern with vacant houses has been growing in recent years. There are generally several measurements to characterize vacant houses. The reasons why housing markets experience unoccupied houses are different for every characterization. This paper begins by classifying vacant houses based on the unemployment theory in labor economics. This paper then demonstrates a mechanism that can explain each category of vacant houses.

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In recent years, empty houses trend to be increased due to the declining population, the deterioration of existing houses, the changes in social demands, and so on. Especially, empty houses with poor management have a bad influence on the surrounding area, and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and tourism is implementing various countermeasures. Specifically, the support is provided for the measures against removal or utilization of empty houses, and the modeling efforts such as developing human resources and consultation system implemented by local government and private sector.

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This paper introduces for municipalities which play active roles in solving vacant house problems. The examples are characterized by the use of public-private collaboration.

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Comparing “Vacant House” Ordinance and “Trash House” Ordinance, it becomes clear that we have to consider a delicate difference depending on the objects. It is necessary to consider these problems about a cause of the “not wellmanaged real estate”, a method of capturing obligor, and an effect of sanctions.

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The measures for unoccupied houses implemented by Kyoto City consist of four parts: Preventing houses from being unoccupied, Utilizing the unoccupied houses or marketing them, Proper management of unoccupied houses, Utilizing the vacant lots. Various organizations of community residents, businesses, government etc. mutually collaborate and promote the initiatives.

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Alignment between city planning for “right-sizing” and vacant property management is crucial in declining situation because of the limitation of budget and human resources. In the City of Flint, city officials created the Blight Elimination Framework [BEF] to promote the efficiency of blight elimination and cooperation between various stakeholders. BEF was created based on the land use typology described in a new master plan. Not long after the formulation of BEF, it showed a partial effect on securing financing and expense reduction. Genesee County Land Bank Authority also created a “decisiontree” that works together with the new master plan to promote the efficiency of property sales. These two methodologies can be a catalyst to link a city-wide strategy to the management of particular vacant land.

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The purpose of theses is to clarify the effectiveness of the promotion of multiple residence in various areas in utilization of vacant houses in depopulated villeges.

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UR rental housing managed by UR (Urban Renaissance Agency) is a rental stock of about 730,000 apartment flats, which took over the public corporation continued from the former Japan Housing Corporation. UR has been carrying out various housing renovations as a countermeasure against the obsolescence of houses built in the mass housing period so far. In this article, I will introduce the genealogy of renovation that we have been doing renovation of UR rental housing stock.

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There has been an increase in akiya (vacant houses) in suburban condominium housing estates built long ago, for reasons such as the deterioration of the buildings or units that are too small for family living. As the numbers of akiya continue to increase, management and public safety are matters of concern. However, there are some residents of old condominium estates who own multiple units because they like the community or the estate’s green environment, etc. Ownership of more than one unit is a phenomenon that can be seen in roughly 10% of most estates, starting with the historic Dojunkai Apartments. The benefit of multiple-unit ownership at the individual level is that it can accommodate the demand to expand one’s residence, not only when the number of family members increases during the child-raising period, but also when the resident needs more space, even temporarily, after retirement in an age of increasing longevity. Units can be relinquished when they are no longer needed, which makes this approach easier than moving into a larger residence. The benefit of multiple-unit ownership for housing estates as a whole is that ownership by residents who are deeply attached to an estate is highly likely to play a positive role in its management and administration. Furthermore, one can also expect this to be advantageous for consensus-building in rebuilding and large-scale renovation projects. The benefit of multiple-unit ownership for society is that otherwise unused akiya are being used. Although there are high hurdles presented by the Condominium Unit Ownership Act, if multiple units could be renovated into single units, this would also lead to a reduction in the number of abandoned units. For these reasons, policy support should be considered.

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To correspond against vacant shops and empty houses as ”stock utilization”, is inevitable in society's degenerate phase, a time when financial resources are scarce. In order to decisively change the regeneration projects that tends to end only with the remediation of the mechanism and the model project, there is no way other than letting the editing skills of the town outstanding, produced by the correcting mechanism of dysfunctional market, and compiling and transmitting information and adequately coordinating various local agents. Even in an economically depressed place, where the population also declines, reinvestment becomes possible to improve the stock value of city infrastructures; by stimulating motivation to join the community with promoting and transmitting the city's attraction, creating a flow of transmigration and new local business. Now I introduce our experience to revitalize the typical depressed urban district, in Ome city, Tokyo.

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This case is charenge by young architects in an area where the number of empty houses is increasing because of being on the hill despite being close to the station. This is their first action or this area, they renovate old tenement houses and open up the streets to make room like a living room in the city. In that process, it is felt that it becomes a more affectionable space for people in the area by getting cooperation from people in the area and utilizing resources in the city. In that place foreign international students stay and spend a variety of events to become a space for various people to visit but they are being watched by local people.

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Many people are currently living in residential area. It has been intended to form a safe and quiet environment where people can raise their children with security when residential area is specifically dedicated to a residential function by separating a place into residential area and working area. However, safety awareness sometimes may create excessive consciousness of privacy and eventually lead to individualized residential area and diluted mutual relation. Since the concept of family and family style become more diverse such as population decline, aging and so on, reconsideration is now required to examine the future of residential area. In such a situation, it would be effective to reexamine residential area from a viewpoint of “Commons”. We introduce the efforts at the local base type share house ”CASACO” which rebuilt the old townhouse, from the point of view as designer-to-operation actor and also one of local residents.

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This paper considers the influence of re-use of vacant houses on the area. Three examples were taken up and their social significance and the ripple effect on the area were discussed. I mentioned the possibility of 　”generation change of areas due to redistribution of used houses” and ”renovation of areas by re-use of multiple vacant houses in linkage”.

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It's obvious that the real reason why the number of vacant houses is increasing in Japan is “Too much building new houses”. We must have “Total target numbers of housing” right now.

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Japan Trans-Housing Institute (JTI), a not-for-profit organization, has been offering “My-Home Rental Service”, the service to rent up the non-commercial residential properties from the owners aged 50 or more since 2006. JTI re-rents such “my-homes” to younger generation, thereby facilitates the circulation of the residential assets over generations. Though JTI operates financially independent, it’s rental obligation is supported by the governmental guarantee fund. My-Home Rental Service is not designed per se to facilitate the re-use of the vacant/abandoned houses, which has been a nationwide issue in these days. 41% of some 1000 houses rented so far by JTI, however, are the ex-“vacant houses”. This paper makes research using the JTI’s internal data on the profile and performance of such vacant houses as compared to the rest of the portfolio.

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Opinions on determining if it is a subject for mayor real-estate businesses, or local, smaller real-estate businesses are very different. For bigger companies, the mainstream way to make profit is to deal with mainly newly built houses, and during the process receive fees both from the buyer and from the seller as well. However, in case of the vacant houses, they have difficulties finding their owners in the first place, and also to come up with a profitable way to use these properties. On the other hand, the smaller real-estate businesses are focusing on the local development as sharing economy, and creating businesses in more suburb, where the number of these vacant houses are much higher. In order to make use of these houses it is necessary for it to be attached the community and environment, which also needs to be ideal, so the creation of projects to sustain a steady development of the area are necessary.

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is very beneficial to promote the utilization of usable vacant houses among the situation that vacant houses are increasing, not only for the revitalization of city areas by utilization of existing housing stock, but also for the promotion of welfare projects with poor financial power. In order to promote it, it is essential and important to grasp precisely individual conditions and needs from both of present owners and using candidates, and grope for the appropriate matching. The best occupational ability to play on that role is registered architect. I’d like to propose the methods to promote the utilization of vacant houses by utilizing the characteristics, knowledge, and know-how of registered architects.

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This paper tried to set three-step changing process of residential environment in consideration for management abilities and uses of residents. We found many residents feel burdened about gardens management including families with children, so community system of garden management is very useful. Support system of transferring houses focused on easy management, continuities of communities, and etc. is useful for elders. Besides it is important to promote that their children return to their parents’ houses which are vacant.

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In Public Procurement, freedom of contract is revised in view of equalitarianism and effectiveness. To choose the partner of contract, there are general competitive bidding, restrictive competitive bidding and private contract. In principle, local government must choose the partner in general competitive bidding. However, it might lose the creativity of architectural design to adhere principle. As solution this problem, integrated evaluating method and proposal method are suggested.

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In Japan, the services of professionals in architectural design, graphic design, technology, and arts for the public sphere are in principle evaluated according to criteria of accounting law and local government laws. This article discusses the process of presenting proposals to the Science Council of Japan calling for the revision of these practices and evaluation on the basis of quality.

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For both the national and local governments of Japan, the law stipulates the lowest price principle as the basis of public procurement so that competition and proposal in which the highest quality bidder is chosen with the fixed price are exceptional there. Because of this rule, the governments, especially local ones, make it a rule to choose the architect who offers the lowest fee for the designing of even the symbolic building for the locality. The procurement of the governments of building, landscaping, civil engineering and industrial designs based on the lowest price, however, tends to neglect the value of the landscape of the city. It would also reduce the opportunity of fostering talented architects and designers. The governments thus should choose all the intellectual and innovative creation, except for simple goods and services, on the basis of quality through competition and proposal by abolishing the lowest price principle.

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In Japan, the use of the technical proposal method has increased in recent years, and also the comprehensive evaluation method which is known as QCBS in western countries has come into use for the central government procurement of engineering consultancy services. However, some contracting authorities, mostly local governments, still often apply the lowest price criterion for the award of such services. Furthermore, as for the comprehensive evaluation method, it is often the case that consulting firms are forced to make contracts at unreasonably low prices. In many countries of the world, there is a tendency toward increased recourse to QBS, and greater consideration for quality during the selection stage of QCBS. Based on the comparative review of foreign procurement procedures, it is concluded that QBS or the technical proposal method should be mainly used for selecting consulting firms while giving due regard to fair procedures and so on. It is also indicated that when QCBS is used, more weight should be given to the quality component.

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The scope of public procurement is not limited to the areas of architecture and civil engineering. It involves areas related to various design fields, which causes the problem of how to select intellectual-value producers in public procurement projects. Here, I would like to clarify some aspects of this problem. Design in public procurement includes many specialized domains such as spatial design, graphic design, craft design, interior design, industrial design, sign design and fashion design. As with architecture and civil engineering, methods used for choosing designers often depend on how much their works would cost. In addition, as intellectual-value creating services fall short of receiving appropriate recognition, procurement of those services tends to be handled in the same way as procuring goods or decided by free public offering. Such practices are questionable because design creation is so intellectual that it is inappropriate to commission a designrelated project solely by the amount of money it costs. That leads me to the conclusion that it is necessary to revise the Accounting Law and the Local Autonomy Act to introduce a new standard for selecting intellectual-value producers in the same manner as discussed in the architecture and civil engineering fields.

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Public buildings are built by tax, and mainly used by citizens. Citizens are most affected by changes in the surrounding townscapes and environment when new buildings are built. However, most people do not have much interest to the new public buildings before its completion. I think that the discussions, from the planning stage by the client / citizen / experts, about the purpose of construction, the influence on the surroundings, budget and maintenance, is necessary to share the meaning of the construction. We don’t have much opportunities to learn about the intention, fun, beauty, etc. of architectural design through observation tours from childhood as in Western countries. So most citizens are indifferent to that many Japanese municipalities still select architects by design fee bidding when planning a new public buildings. In order to eliminate such unreasonableness, I would like to think about how to make citizens interested to the better form of public buildings and the method of the selection of the architect.

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Public procurement for build environment is the issue which is important but controversial. The works are expected to achieve well organized circumstance with saving budget. Especially, in recent Japan, it is becoming more difficult, because they have to set up new condition to prepare the aging society under the huge pressure of cutting budget. The former part of this paper explains that the recent situation of the procurement for public building in Japan to compare with other country, such as France and UK. The later part of the paper points out some important issues to overcome these difficulties with referring some practices in the reconstruction works from the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011.

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Summarize the progress of the method of selecting public infrastructure designers and describe operational issues. And by reporting the trend survey to select building design companies under Kagawa prefecture, we report that the ”public recruitment type general scoring system” is the trend of public procurement of intellectual products. However, the current example of the local public entity that is responsible for the operation is the three types of ”nominated competitive bidding”,”general competitive bidding” and ”voluntary contract”, and this ”public recruitment type general scoring system” should be established Recommend. In addition, along with the tide of the administrative regulation which procedures also regulate, we also recommend to make ”contract regulations” ”contract regulations.” It responds to the proposal of the revision of the law surrounding this by the Science Council of Japan.

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This paper discusses on the ways in which public authority evaluates quality in architecture and urban design to select knowledge base service with qualitative aspect in procurement process, by focusing on the English experience. In England in the late 1990s, the need to improve construction industry was discussed, and then in the early 2000s the urban renaissance policy to activate urban living was progressed. These came to be backgrounds to bring the government’s establishment of professional consultation body named Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment. The roles of CABE were enabling local authority to realise better public project, providing design review service for local authority to support decision on planning permission, and publishing report, guide, case study and so on based on CABE own research, in order to support public authority to evaluates quality in architecture and urban design. Through the English experience, it is pointed out the important role of the support body to collect and provide information and technique to not only public authority but also citizens, and to support local authority to establish local design review system to derive their own landscape.

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In 2004, the EU Commission established Directive No. 18 and requested countries that are members of the EU to make the Competitive Dialog domestic legal. But Germany resisted the legislation of Competitive Dialog violently. This paper examines the background and the reason why Germany resisted leg islation of Competitive Dialog.

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The construction system has changed since the accounting law for about 70 years, which was established after the Second World War, the method of remuneration is still not reviewed. The French architectural system is obvious in the scope of construction, responsibility for client, architects, and constructors which are composed different companies specialized for each of construction. The choice of architect is set in MOP’s law with a four-stage rewards. Architecture influences society and the state of architectural patrimony represents society. In recently, natural disasters have been frequenting and are giving great damage to society. And also, the Japanese construction industry is becoming a big problem of society. It is missing natural, technical and human prevention. Now, it is required to find a solution by intellectual production action. Architect’s work is an intellectual product and it will be necessary to review this remuneration. It should be recognized justly by law.

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In Japan, to prepare for a large earthquake that may occur in the near future, it is an issue to promote earthquake resistance of buildings. However, it is pointed out that consumers' interest in the earthquake resistance is low. And market response to information disclosure on earthquake retrofit has not been fully verified. We estimate the effect of earthquake retrofit on housing rents and prices for apartment buildings of Tokyo metropolitan area while focusing on the preference of tenants and buyers. As a result, we find that housing rents are significantly rising by earthquake retrofit. This result shows the tenants are evaluating the earthquake resistance.

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