(Conclusions)

“Compact” and “networked” can play complementary roles to augment their effectiveness synergistically. Compacting the various facilities that make up a city and consolidating them together spatially will help create a denser association of people. Such urban facilities and human activities combine to create a more attractive living environment that allures more people to join in a population of users needed to sustain local networks of public transportation facilities, assuring enhanced network quality, plus sustainable availability of services. As the population of urban dwellers grows through betterment of the living environment, a positive cycle of growth derives from “compact” and “networked”.

Pursuing both “compact” and “networked” at the same time, instead of either, would be essential to realizing a sustainable city. The MLIT is also working to this end. In August 2014, the Act on Making Partial Amendments to the Act on Special Measures Concerning Urban Renaissance, etc. came into effect to drive the effort to form a compact city into which welfare and other livelihood service facilities and housing are concentrated and in which elderly people can live without anxiety. Efforts directed at forming a compact city require consensus among the stakeholders, including citizens, private entrepreneurs and administrators. From this standpoint, it would be necessary to give an objective and quantitative assessment to the significance of a compact city, why it is needed, what it brings about and so on, with reference to the “Handbook on the Assessment of Urban Structures” released in the same month.

In November 2014, the Act on Making Partial Amendments to the Act on Revitalization and Renewal of Regional Public Transportation was enacted to inaugurate a framework for formulating programs to form sustainable networks of regional public transportation at the initiative of local public entities in pursuit of coordinated community development. In addition, a framework of developing regional public transportation restructuring projects and formulating regional public transportation restructuring implementation programs for implementing these projects was also laid down to restructure region-wide public transportation networks in conjunction with coordinated community development. In connection with these measures, the Compact City Formation Support Team was set up by the ministries and agencies concerned, with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism acting as a secretariat, pursuant to Overcoming Population Decline and Vitalizing Local Economies: Comprehensive Strategy. The team is committed to reinforcing lateral ties among the ministries and agencies concerned, as by exploring coordinated support policies, to expedite municipal approaches to forming compact cities.

## Utilizing Public Facilities and Public Real Estate (PRE) and Public-Private Partnership

As discussed in Section 2-2, the “Effects of Population Decline on Cities and Daily Life in Rural Areas,” Chapter 1, declining tax revenues caused by depopulation and the shrinking economic and industrial activities in its wake, and the increase in social security expenses from aging society predict increasingly tight local finances. Under such circumstances, the tasks of utilizing public real estate (PRE) and addressing the issues of aged infrastructures built back during the period of the nation’s rapid economic growth, such as public facilities, roads, bridges and water supply and sewerage systems, looms into importance.

## (Coordination of Community Development and Public Real Estate (PRE))

In proceeding with urban compacting and transport networking to form a compact city, it is necessary to take into consideration the consistency with the associated policies for maintaining medical care and welfare, revitalizing central urban areas and restructuring PRE. The compact formation support team mentioned earlier is committed to supporting municipalities in approaching these associated policies.

As social infrastructures continue to get aged, the status of aging of public facilities and infrastructural assets was surveyed from a viewpoint of their life expectencies. The survey revealed that about 43% of the public facilities surveyed have aged and more progressively than other infrastructures, such as bridges.

Because the cost of renewing public facilities, etc. is predicted to grow in the future, it will become extremely difficult to continue maintaining and renewing existing public facilities, etc. at the present pace.

For this reason, it is vital to make effective use of the existing stocks of public facilities, and to coordinate