SUMMARY OF MASTER’S DISSERTATION
StudentIdentification
Number80833195

NameHitoshi Sakai

Title
Systems Engineering Approach for Enhancement of Local City Attractiveness in Japan
Abstract
Most of Japanese local cities are loosing populations rapidly today. Younger generations areleaving local cities. Therefore society is facing serious aging problem. Not quite a few local cities areexhausted.
There are various studies on local city issues, especially on housing, living and public
transportation. Even though Japan faces nationwide depopulation issue, the author still belives that itis possible for local cities to enhance its attractiveness regardless of depopulation and urban sprawl.
The author asuumes that the attractivness is enhanced by integration of residential area so that the city
can be more compact. Therefore, it is not enough to consider only housing, living and transportation
issues in order to explain the mechanism of population increase in the cities. The purpose of this study
is to propose effective measures to make local cities more active by enhancing its attractiveness. The
author focuses on considering increase and decrease of local city population. The approach isobviously different from the previous studies, which mainly pay attention to housing and living issues.
In the analysis, the author introduced systems engineering approach for “visualization” and “factors
analysis” of the problem. Mind map, fish bone diagram and covariance structure analysis are utilized
effectively. As a result, the author figured out the relative importance, causality and priority among theimpact factors which affect attractiveness of local cities.
The author picked up some practical measure for enhancement of local city attractiveness andexamined the effectiveness of each measure considering similar practical application examples. As aresult, the author figured out that economic aspect has greater impact on the local city attractivenessthan the others. Therefore, the author concluded the following four masures are beneficial;
1. Focusing on economic aspect of local city attractiveness (e.g. job security, etc.), especially forworking generation
2. Stoping birthrate declining
3. Improving urban transport system (e.g. Independence from car transportation)
4. Miantaining population density by designing a local city more compact against unavoidable
depopulation
In concluding, it is ture that people tend to count attractiveness of local cities on urban streetscape andscenery. However, what is more important for the attractiveness is the fact that local residents havesecured jobs and thus can afford their living stably. In other words, economy of the local city must be
active and stable. In addition, it is also necessary to maintain social environment in which families canspend their life and give birth and raise children without problems. Furthermore, the result shows theimportance of public transport system which is independent from car. Keeping a city compact is also
an effective measure as well. These measures contribute not only to enhance the attractiveness as aworkplace but also encourage people to give birth and raise children in the local cities.