The roles of the public and private sectors in urban policy

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

During 1997 to 1999, we have examined the roles of public, private, and the third sectors in urban and housing policy field, comparing Japanese and British experience. In order to study actual situation of policy enforcement, we have done several field studies, such as a rehabilitation and renewal policy of urban housing in Tokyo and Birmingham, and a field research of regeneration policy of local cities like Fukushima. We have reached the following tentative conclusion.Since the election of new labor government in 1997, a socalled "the third way" policy has been pursued in many areas in the U.K.. In the fields of housing and urban policy, the partnership between public and private sectors has occupied a central position. On the contrary, the Japanese government even now emphasizes private initiatives and market mechanism, and has not developed any clear ideas for the promotion of the third sector.Non profit and non governmental organizations became the most important actors in the urban and housing policy both in Japan and the U.K.. Both government have encouraged people's voluntarily community involvement in urban and housing policy and then a concept of capacity building became the basic and fundamental idea.There is a distinctive movement toward a unified comprehensive urban and housing policy, and a social exclusion became a basic concept for evaluating and enforcing urban housing policy in the U.K.. However, in Japan there is no clear comprehensive concept like social exclusion and the need for the development of key concepts is urgent.Based on these research we are now in the process of writing 2 books, urban housing regeneration in the U.K. (written in Japanese) and housing and urban policy in Japan (in Japanese).