Hiroyuki Arita

The Type and the Location of Village Parks

One of the main subjects of open space planning is improvement of the open space system. It is important to develop a method which evaluates and plans the composition and location of village parks, to improve the open space system. It is desired for open space system deliberately. However, it is impossible to apply directly the planning method of city park system (based on park size per head and population in usage area) for rural areas. In agricultural village, the distribution pattern of population is not homogeneous, and population density is low. If we apply directly the urbanmodel based on homogeneous distribution pattern of population, we may overestimate usage area when we take priority on securing park size. We underestimate the park size when we take priority on appropriateness of usage area. In order to solve this subject, we developed a basic model of a park system (for composition and style), and proposed the method of location planning by the investigations of actual condition of village parks.

A Method of Cancelling the Designation of “Agricultural Land Zone”by the Local Government

Under the Law for the Improvement of Agricultural Development Area, the conversion of farmland into non-farmland is generally prohibitted in “Agricultural Land Zone”. So, the formland cancerned must be cancelled from the designation of “Agricultural Land Zone” for it. Now, there is nopractical regulation for cancelling the designation of “Agricultural Land Zone”. Therefore, it causes disordered land use in urban-fringe.In this paper, we analyze the unique method of cancelling the designation of “Agricultural Land Zone” of Matsuto local government. By the method, the local government can permit to cancel the designation of “Agricultural Land Zone” when the farmlands abut roads or housing lands on at least twosides. we discuss the availability of the method. The results are summarized as follows.1. The method is mostly available for cancelling the designation of “Agricultural Land Zone”.2. Even if we apply it, inadequate cancellation can be sometimes permitted, such as in case of the farmlands located far from rural living areas.3. It can be improved, if we take form of the farmland adjacent to rural living area into consideration.