Applications of GIS to urban planning and management: Problems facing Japanese local governments

Japanese local governments consist of about 3,380 municipalities in 2000. The total survey undertaken in 1997 says that GIS was implemented in 455 (14.3%) out of 3,182 municipalities that answered to the survey. This paper considers GIS utilization, especially focusing on urban planning and management in Japanese local government. Typical GIS applications in the urban planning and management are divided into three businesses: inquiry on the content of urban plan decision, register management, and planning. The most successful GIS application in the local government is an inquiry system on the content of urban plan decision. ‘Mappy’, Urban Plan Information Inquiry System developed by Yokohama City, is introduced as an example. The register management treats the registers for urban planned road, urban park, and urban open space, and the receipt book for development permission application. GIS can systematize their management based on maps. District diagnosis system using GIS performed two analyses in Ichikawa City. One is the calculation of area and ratio for land-use. The other is the measurement of land-use purity. GIS can calculate the degree of purity (namely occupancy rate) of specified land-use in the land-use zoning system. Most of Japanese local governments implement GIS and obtain moderate results. However, it is reported that some municipalities that paid huge amount of budget to implement GIS hardly used them. The final section will consider various issues in the use of administrative GIS. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.