## Summary

Chapter 1 discussed how people feel about their daily life and living conditions, based on findings from the survey. The survey highlights the ways of living in home town, being active in society and traveling from one place to another.

## (People’s lifestyle needs)

Concerning living in home town, both in urban and rural areas, people attach importance in particular to fundamental living conditions, including things concerning everyday lifestyles and safety and security. The degree of satisfaction concerning convenience and other matters is generally lower in rural areas. Concerning housing, the performance of housing, including the incorporation of more barrier-free features, must be enhanced, while at the same time, how to secure housing poses serious issues in this severe economic climate. Regarding the surrounding environments, developing more greenery and waterside areas and ensuring of safety and security are essential.

With regard to being active in society, in terms of carrying out everyday activities, realizing convenience and additional enjoyment is important. Concerning job experience, severe employment situations and difficulties in striking a good balance between work and private life are again highlighted. Regarding leisure, people need it to refresh their minds, though economic conditions and other factors often prevent them from enjoying leisure. Generally speaking, people in rural areas are more disadvantaged when it comes to convenient lifestyles, job opportunities, and facilities for leisure activities.

Concerning traveling from one place to another, it is essential to continuously maintain transport services for people in rural areas, as rural public transport is weakening. On the other hand, in urban areas, it is necessary to further mitigate congestion and increase capacity in order to deliver passengers to their destinations swiftly. It is also necessary to continuously reduce traffic jams on roads. People are well aware of needs for ensured safety and security and the incorporation of more barrier-free features.

## (Essential features of people’s needs)

As mentioned above, people’s needs cover a wide variety of topics, from concerns over safety and security in daily life to relaxation and enjoyment. In addition, their needs vary according to regions, living conditions and basic values on daily life. Furthermore, people anxiously like to know whether they really have safety nets for times of need.

## (How we have to address people’s needs)

As mentioned above in this chapter, there are many problems and needs that we have to address. However, it would be unrealistic to try to satisfy all parties, and implementation of such unrealistic measures would cost too much. Furthermore, there are some trade-off relationships between individual needs among people, for example, the affluence of natural environments and the variety of facilities for leisure activities.

On the other hand, there are increasingly new measures to address needs, such as the use of newly advanced technologies, including ICT, to address the decline in mobility. In addition, it is to be noted that recently more and more people are voluntarily playing a leading role in regional activities.

Based on the above findings, public administration must improve environments so that people’s needs be addressed and, if necessary, firmly satisfied.

## (How MLIT policies address people’s needs, especially those of people in rural areas)

The section below refers to people’s needs concerned about yet not very satisfied with. To conclude this chapter, we present how we have improved the convenience up until now and our future plans and measures.

Based on this chapter, in Chapter 2, we will present MLIT policies for addressing a variety of needs from five viewpoints.