The rural and urban communities have a distinct structure, function and dynamism, which provide us with livelihood and define our lives through our various daily activities. Circumstances surrounding the rural and urban communities are increasingly changing, such as with the rapid development towards globalization, and consequently the number of challenges needing solutions seems to be ever on the increase.

The focus of this book is on the rural and urban environments, and the wide-ranging representations of various players’ interacting activities that preserve or destroy these environments. The key issues contemporary to the rural and urban communities include appropriate overall environmental governance involving collaboration and competition among different actors, preservation or creation of a rich and lively living environment. and a search for ways to ensure the inheritance of our greatest assets for following generations.

This book attempts to elucidate the following issues: how we may use rural and urban sustainability as beacons for taking relevant and necessary policy measures and for community activities, and how to further ameliorate such measures and activities. The question of rural and urban sustainability is both specific and rich in context, and offers excellent cases for extracting the essence of multi-layered environmental governance. This volume presents current key academic findings, while also considering interactions between humans and nature, such as local resource management through the commons, and rural-urban interdependence.

About the Author

Kota Asano is a professor at the Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Japan. Mitsuo Takada is a professor at the Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, Japan.

Table of Contents:
List of figures • List of tables • List of contributors • Preface • Introduction (Kota Asano and Mitsuo Takada) Part I: Theory and methodology Chapter 1: On the sustainability of a common property resource: An implication from dynamic game theory (Ken-Ichi Akao and Gerhard Sorger) Chapter 2: Non-point source pollution and the second-best taxation on pesticide (Ayumi Onuma and Hideyuki Akaishi) Chapter 3: The investment in social capital through rural development policy in Japan (Kyohei Matsushita) Chapter 4: Effects of local waste taxation and trade restrictions on industrial waste flow in Japan (Toshiaki Sasao) Chapter 5: Cross-national individual differences in environmental attitudes with special reference to risk and time preference (Atsushi Maruyama) Chapter 6: Economic valuation for the sustainable use of ecosystem services (Kentaro Yoshida) Part II: Case studies - rural sustainability Chapter 7: Challenges to rural sustainability in the management of recovered beaver populations (Yukichika Kawata and Janis Ozolinš) Chapter 8: Land management issues in depopulated areas of Japan (Yoshiaki liguni) Chapter 9: Necessity of multilevel governance for marine protected areas (MPAs): An analysis from their functions and the “Cost of Commons” (Teruyuki Shinbo, Raul G. Bradecina and Yoshinori Morooka) Chapter 10: Japanese coastal fishery resource management and fishery rights system (Xiaobo Lou) Part III: Case studies - urban sustainability Chapter 11: Sustainability in housing complex revitalization: “Machi-zukuri” utilizing a scenario-based approach (Mitsuo Takada) Chapter 12: Landscape planning and local governance to deliver sustainable development (Hisako Koura) Chapter 13: Environmental governance of dwellings of a small-scale community along a historical alley in Kyoto City (Sachiko Morishige) Chapter 14: Effects of mobility management on promoting the use of community buses managed by civic collaboration (Nobuhiko Matsumura) Chapter 15: Public transport provided by local dwellers for maintaining their daily life (Hiroto Inoi) Chapter 16: Towards sustainable regeneration? An integrated social, economic and environmental way of greening former industrial areas - the case of St Helens, UK (Tomoko Miyagawa) Chapter 17: Ownership and uses of communal space in courtyard style settlements of Patan City, Nepal (Lata Shakya) Chapter 18: Roles of microfinance in critical environmental transition by natural disaster: Case study of resettlement after the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 (Masahiro Maeda) Index