Urban planning in Europe is currently undergoing a darastic change both in style and substance, mainly due to the initiatives and financial assistance of the Euripean Union. The basic philosophy underlying the rennaisance in urban planning in Europe is based upon the four basic principles advanced by Jane Jacobs in her classic Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961. In this article, Jane Jacobs's four basic principles are briefly examined and the case of Rouvain la Neuve is described to illustate the implications of Jane Jacobs's philosophy.

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This paper aims to outline the history of urban regeneration in USA and to make clear what we can learn from it. The author indicates; 1) the most of sloppy polices were failed and municipalities and local NPOs held the keys for successful urban regeneration in USA. 2) Then we have to consider and understand local voices, and it is necessary to create a more decentralized planning system for urban regeneration in Japan.

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The improvement of densely populated districts in the metropolitan areas has been long standing problem of Japanese town planning. This problem has been closed up in the government's urban regeneration policy, aiming at the economic revitalization by increasing the investments in the urban developments. The government is going to realize the urban regeneration mainly by means of easing the physical regulations and strengthening the power of enforcement to implement the projects. Though these means might work for the large-scale developments, they will not work in the densely populated districts where the ownership-rights are subdivided and complicated and a lot of aged people lives. In these areas improvement and co-housing should be done, but the density should be under 200units per ha (2.0far) and the stories of the houses under 3 to maintain the living environment and social relationships. And the areas should be developed by piecemeal not only to maintain the community but also to reach the agreement easily. Also in Japan the land value is so high that if the developer buys the land the housing price becomes expensive. To reduce the price the developer is forced to make the building larger. In this essay I would like to propose the way to improve such densely populated districts avoiding the problems mentioned above. The idea is that the CBD the leaders of the community establish develops the districts by piecemeal. The missions of the CBD are to make plans with inhabitants, form their agreements, fund money, control the construction, and manage the houses. This essay discusses the conditions the CBD works in Japanese planning and housing system.

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The bipolarization of the land price is going on. To prevent the decline of the land price, the landowner desires to cancel the defect of the land. The defect of the land can be canceled by the joint building. The right transformation is necessary for the implementation of the joint building. In the urban region the land value is the worth of the solid. We can do right transformation fairly, by using the three-dimensional land value.

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This paper shows EU and UK new enivironmental policy. First, the new Environment Action Programme provides the environmental component of the Community's strategy for sustainable development. The new Programme entitled Environment 2010: Our Future, Our Choice takes a wide-ranging approach to these challenges and gives a strategic direction to the Commission's environmental policy over the next decade, as the Community prepares to expand its boundaries.
In 1999, the UK Government published “A better quality of life”, a strategy for sustainable development for the UK. At the heart of sustainable development is the simple idea of ensuring a better quality of life for everyone, now and for generations to come. Progress towards sustainable development will be measured by a system of indicators. Headline indicators identify the key issues relating to quality of life

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After the war Japan has experienced frequent land price inflations since the beginning of the 1960's, which saw the first peak of land price hike. Especially, land price hike in the end of 1980's, which is called land price bubble, has caused serious problems on the Japanese economy. Monetary and fiscal policies have been done toward the economic recovery after the bubble collapse. But, they have not worked well. Though some critics doubt the applicability of economic theory to the Japanese land market, we have tried to verify the economic theory by using time series data after the war and time series analysis technique, such as the Error Correction Model. Then we have found that Japanese land prices are basically determined by market fundamentals equation, though influenced by money supply.

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The purpose of this study is to develop the theoretical land price model based on the statistical background that land price data conform the lognormal distribution. The factors determining land prices are separated into two categories. These categories are the macro factors, which influence the time-series changes in land prices, and the micro factors, which influence the spatial gaps of land prices. These time and spatial factors are not considered in the hedonic price analysis or other land price analysis. However, it is important to develop the land price model theoretically in consideration of these two categories in order to evaluate micro factors properly at time-series. This study shows the theoretical expansion for the development of the land price model.

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