associations about to embark on similar activities, or those experimental approaches, etc. relevant to ingenious, advanced private community development activities, in its bid to make the concept of sustainable community development with community participation come true through maintenance and betterment of community charms and vitalities and get it come to stay.

In addition, consideration is in progress toward the realization of measures aimed at combating aging expressways in conjunction with urban redevelopment, using the Tsukiji River and other sections of the Metropolitan Expressways as model cases, on the basis of the Road Act amended in FY 2014 that allows for usage of upper open spaces on roads.

Moreover, public-private partnership efforts leveraging road spaces are pushed forward in order to create forums for regional activity/exchanges and maintain/improve road quality.

## 2 General Endeavors to Build an Intensive Urban Structure

Compact cities and development of surrounding transportation networks such as by rebuilding public transportation networks should be worked on continuously with the mid- to long-term perspectives as they are effective policy means to realize specific administrative purposes such as maintaining and improving convenience of lives of residents, revitalizing regional economies by enhanced productivity in the service industry, and reducing administrative costs by improved efficiency in administrative services.

With the aim of pushing forward initiatives of municipalities toward the realization of compact cities, the Act on Special Measures concerning Urban Regeneration was amended in 2014 to create the appropriate location plan system for encouraging establishment of residential and urban functions with economic incentives. As of the end of FY 2015, 276 municipalities made specific efforts on creating appropriate location plans, of which one city prepared and published the appropriate location plan.

In addition, the Compact City Formation Support Team was established (secretariat: MLIT) in March 2015 which provides support across ministries so that these initiatives of municipalities will be promoted as comprehensive efforts in coordination with various relevant measures concerning healthcare/welfare, housing, realignment of public facilities and the optimum use of government owned facilities.

The Team responds to consultation from municipalities and collects their issues/needs by holding briefing sessions for municipalities, block consultation meetings and the like as one-stop services, and shares the issues and other information collected with relevant ministries to examine support measures in light of coordination with other relevant measures. Also, in order to yield multifaceted effects of compact cities, relevant ministries will support initiatives of municipalities in a unified manner by such means as putting together model cases of good initiatives that would serve as useful reference for other municipalities and sharing information on specific effects and details of initiatives in a visible manner.

## 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 reconstruction 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 2015, 139 routes were declared by 71 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 potential as the core of urban reconstruction, because they attract numerous people to use the various kinds of transport facilities that converge upon them.

The MLIT leveraged the implementation of transport node improvement projects, urban and regional transport strategy promotion projects, integrated railway station improvement projects, and other projects at the transport nodes, such as the