# What is required in daily life? ~ Of what people are not satisfied despite its importance people attach to it ~

By analyzing the current situation through highlighting our ways of living, we found that people attach a high level of importance to the convenience in daily life, and that the degree of satisfaction with the convenience is low in particular in rural areas. This section discusses factors behind such findings, and will briefly refer to recently-introduced measures to address the issue.

## (Lack of satisfaction on deterioration of daily-life-convenience in rural areas, and former policy measures and their problems)

As mentioned in (1) and (2) above, people attach a high importance to services and convenience in daily life. Yet the degree of satisfaction with such convenience is low, in particular in rural areas. As mentioned in (3) above, particularly in rural areas, people feel high-level of frustration with public transport in community.

Factors behind this lack of satisfaction include deteriorating convenience in daily life due to the transfer of public functions and commercial and other functions from city centres to suburbs, the decline of downtowns, increasing motorization, and reductions in public transport services.

Each of these factors has already been pointed out previously. MLIT has taken various measures aimed at (1) invigorating downtowns areas through the enactment of the three laws for town development and (2) vitalizing regional public transportation through comprehensive projects involving light rail transit (LRT) systems. However, from the viewpoint of people’s interests, the essential point is whether the quality of their daily life is improved or not, and the above findings reveal that we still have problems to be solved.

We needed to explore appropriate measures by understanding structures and functions of “a town” and roles of transport linking towns, as much as grasping in accordance with local conditions. We had to reinforce our policies in order to fulfill the requirements that we so far failed to satisfy.

## (New policy measures of MLIT to address above-mentioned issues)

Based on the above conditions, we decided to push forward various policy measures to expand urban functions in downtowns, including the improvement of traditional urban districts, the revitalization of commercial districts, the improvement of facilities to make urban areas more convenient and improvement of cooperative dwellings, following the revision of the three laws of town development in 2006, in a comprehensive and effective manner. In addition, from the viewpoint of town development, MLIT reviewed existing zoning restrictions so as to make it easier to properly allocate urban functions, such as large-scale facilities attracting many people and public facilities, which would have profound influence on the urban structure.

Concerning regional public transport systems, following the enforcement of the Act on Revitalization and Rehabilitation of Local Public Transportation Systems in 2007, MLIT created, in 2008, as a budgetary measure; “local public transport systems and rehabilitation comprehensive project”. These moves were designed to advance the introduction of new transport services developed through flexible concepts in accordance with circumstances of each town, as well as to incorporate various parties concerned in a process of recognizing common problems in order to make efforts to invigorate and rehabilitate public transport systems, taking account of diversity of interests among peoples concerned within each town.

## (Improving convenience and fostering a feeling of security through comprehensive policy measures)

For people living in home town, it is important that they have well-arranged commercial and public services essential for their lifestyles within an easily accessible distance, and it is also essential for those living in suburbs to have an easy access to these functions through public transportation.

For this reason, MLIT will comprehensively and strategically push forward the above-mentioned measures by coordinating them, MLIT will encourage the local people concerned, including both service providers and service users, to reach a consensus with them. The many parties concerned are now discussing and pursuing desirable responses, in a cross-sectional manner. We would like to take advantage of this fact to improve convenience in people's daily life and foster a feeling of security, by rehabilitating and invigorating each town and its traffic system.