Empirical Studies on the Administration and Finance of Metropolitan Areas in the Process of Urban Reconstruction

1. 作为国家核心的东京的过度集中化问题，反映了日本区域和城市经济社会的一些新的重大变化。这些变化与经济的国际化、高技术化、服务化以及信息社会和老龄化社会的出现密切相关。本项目试图探讨这些变化的内容、原因和意义，重点是它们对公共财政的影响。这项研究分两行进行。一是东京和大阪地区的比较调查，同时考虑到名古屋、纽约等其他大都市区的最新情况。二是回顾分析近十年或十五年城市财税改革的主要研究和政策建议。这样做是为了在这些问题上提出新的改革思想。由于我们的研究结果和想法已在两份报告中显示，在此，我们想总结一下我们作为研究结论而制定的下个世纪城市政策的主要议程。(1)内城地区特别是东京以外地区变化的政策响应。(2)根据产业的服务化转型进行财政结构改革（如对日益增长的地下经济征税等）。(3)应对与城市人口老龄化相关的财政变化（养老基金、医疗保健、社会福利需求、城市设施由年轻人转为老年人使用、所得税税基丧失等）。(4)对基础设施恶化和改造的应对。特别是支持地方基础设施维护和翻新的财政措施。(5)为城市国际化和内部信息文化中心功能建立新的财政手段（如设施税等）。

1. The problem of hypercentralization to Tokyo, the nation's single core, reflects some new big changes of regional and urban economy and society in Japan. These changes have taken place interrelated with internationalization, high-tech, and service oriented shifts of economies, and the emergence of information society and aging society. This project has been an attempt to inversigate the contents, causes and significances of these changes focusing on their impacts to public finance. The research was done in two lines. One was the comparative survey between Tokyo and Osaka area, taking into account the recent situations of other metropolitan area like Nagoya, New York and so on as well. The other one was the reviewing and analysing the major studies and policy proposals for urban fiscal and tax reform of the last ten or fifteen years. This was done for the purposing new reform ideas on those matters.2. As our findings and ideas are shown in the two volume reports we made, here we would like to summarise the major agenda for the urban policy toward the next century which we formulated as the conclusion of our studies. (1) Policy responses to the changes of inner city areas, especially outsides Tokyo area. (2) Reform of fiscal structure in accordance with the service oriented transformation of industries (ex. taxing on the growing underground economies etc.). (3) Response to fiscal changes related with the aging of urban populations (needs for pension funds, health care, social welfare, conversion of urban facilities from the youngers' use to elderlys', losing of income tax bases, and so on). (4) Responses to infrastructure deterioration and rennovation of them. Especially fiscal measures for supporting the maintenance and rennovation of local infrastructures. (5) Establishing of the new fiscal devices for internationalization and internal information-cultural center functions of the cities (ex. taxing on amenities and so on).