As shopping streets have a variety of characteristics, it would be difficult to uniformly incorporate the concept of "barrier-free" access and universal design. In order to make shopping streets (which are city center environments) into spaces that facilitate their use by anyone, it is extremely important to determine the unique characteristics of each streets from the user's perspective, and to be aware of the trends in barriers as perceived by users. This study examined four shopping streets to determine the barriers that were perceived by users, from the perspective of both building environments and city center environments to gain a basic understanding of problems and issues at shopping streets.

The study focused on shopping streets in neighborhood spaces, and four shopping streets in Chiba Prefecture were selected for study. The current status of the shopping street was determined and operator consciousness and activity characteristics were compared, in order to study the current status of, and issues faced by, shopping streets with lifestyle complement functions that are designed to enable various local residents ranging in age from children through senior citizens to live their lives on an ongoing basis.

A study on relationship and sustainability of region-based community development activities Koki KITANO and Risa NODA This study focuses on the region-based community development in order to gain knowledge about the sustainability of community development activities based on the mutual relationships among people, activities, places, and time. This paper summarizes general trends in activities carried out by NPOs in Chiba prefecture and identifies the characteristics of the community development activities. This paper also examines the sustainability of the community development activities from the perspective of the consciousness of the activity organizations (operators) that play a central role in the community development activities.