## 2 General Endeavors to Realize an Intensive Urban Structure

While regional cities have so far expanded their sphere of urban areas gaining primary impetus from population influx into them, diminishing population now threatens a degradation of the livelihood facilities in the upsized urban areas, with regional economies and vitality decaying. Realizing an intensive urban structure in which a certain population density is maintained and in which urban facilities, such as medical care, welfare, schooling and commerce, are laid out on a planned basis, would be essential to assure the residents of sound and comfortable living and maintain economic activities and sustainable urban management.

In the meantime, as large cities house a rapidly growing population of elderly people, with the resultant rises in the demand for medical care and nursing care, they call for properly laid out urban facilities, availability to public transport and so on to assure elderly people of efficient access to medical and welfare services. Accelerated community planning with charms and walkability to encourage the outing of elderly people would also be important.

To drive these measures in an integrated fashion, a bill for making amendments to the “Act on Special Measures concerning Urban Reconstruction” was submitted to the 186th ordinary session of the Diet to pass on May 14, 2014.

Efforts are also under way to concentrate urban functions, such as medical care and welfare, into core community zones by leveraging private funds and public real-estate properties, such as schools, community centers and public domains, and enhance urban transport to maintain access to these urban functions.

## 3 Urban Planning and Infrastructures Development Taking Advantage of Regional Characteristics

(1) Emergency development of urban planning roads instrumental in encouraging private investment

The development of urban planning roads is significantly instrumental in facilitating urban renewal because it encourages the reconstruction, etc. of roadside buildings. For those routes under construction whose completion is bottlenecked because of only a small lot of land yet to be purchased, the local governments (project implementing entities) announce their pledges to complete the construction within a certain period of time (completion time declaration routes; as of April, 2013, 104 routes were declared by 48 project implementing entities) to speed up the development of the project benefits.

## (2) Developing transport nodes

Transport nodes, such as railway stations and bus terminals, hold a high degree of convenience and potentials as a core of urban reconstruction, because they attract numerous people to use the various kinds of transport facilities that converge on them.

The MLIT leverages the implementation of transport node improvement projects, urban and regional transport strategy promotion projects, General Improvement of Railway Stations and so on at the transport nodes, such as the Shinjuku St. South Exit District, and in the surrounding areas to improve the ease with which passengers transfer from one means of transport to another, to consolidate the urban areas disrupted by railways, etc., to improve the station functions and so on and thus to streamline urban traffic and build up the functions of these transport nodes.

Further, the MLIT subsidizes the implementation of the Station-Town Partnership Project in progress in the Sannomiya