Regional Differences in the Socio-Economic and Built-Environment Factors
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Urban and Regional Planning Review Vol. 4, 2017 | 251 Regional Differences in the Socio-economic and Built-environment Factors of Vacant House Ratio as a Key Indicator for Spatial Urban Shrinkage Hiroki Baba* and Yasushi Asami** Abstract The phenomenon of urban shrinkage is surging through cities in Japan. To understand the current situation of urban shrinkage in Japan, the number of vacant housing would be one of the key indicators. The purpose of the study is to clarify the regional differences in the socio-economic and built-environment factors of vacant house ratio as a key indicator for spatial urban shrinkage. The characteristics of cities are identified by means of socio-economic and built-environment factors, which enable us to describe the current situation of spatial urban shrinkage more precisely. In this analysis, 771 cities in Japan are original units in order to articulate the geographical differences in urban shrinkage. To differentiate regions, we classified cities according to urban employment area (UEA) into 4 categories. Using 7 socio-economic and built-environment variables, a general linear mixed model was employed to clarify the statistical significances in each UEA category. The key findings were as follows. First, strong trends of vacant house ratio and its factors among categories were found. Second, socio-economic factors affecting vacant house ratio in each category were statistically significant in all the categories. Third, built- environment factors also had a clear relationship with vacant house ratio, but the influences varied among the four categories. Finally, in order to prepare for future spatial urban shrinkage, areas of anticipated spatial urban shrinkage were identified from the results of the study. Keywords shrinking cities, vacant house, socio-economic factor, built-environment factor, urban employment area, generalized linear mixed model * Doctoral Student, Department of Urban Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo ** Professor, Department of Urban Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo E-Mail: [email protected] (C) 2017 City Planning Institute of Japan http://dx.doi.org/10.14398/urpr.4.251 Urban and Regional Planning Review Vol. 4, 2017 | 252 1. Introduction The phenomenon of urban shrinkage is surging through cities in Japan. Urban shrinkage is normally defined by the decline of population in a city (Hollander et al. 2009) [1]. The population decline in Japan started from 2008, and the total population will decrease by approximately 30% by 2055 (NIPSSR 2012) [2]. Therefore, nearly all cities in Japan are expected to experience urban shrinkage. Population decrease reduces the efficiency of infrastructure, and consequently infrastructure will require more budget to maintain (Asami 2014) [3]. However, it could also be an opportunity to restructure the cities (Haase 2008) [4]. One of the main impacts that urban shrinkage entails is an increase in vacant housing (Rieniets 2009) [5]. A large amount of vacant housing will lead to anxiety about crime and the deterioration of the city environment (Spelman 1993) [6]. Considering the issues above, the quantity of vacant housing is associated with the spatial impacts of urban shrinkage, so the quantity of vacant housing would be one of the key indicators for urban shrinkage. In this study, we define the spatial situation of urban shrinkage as “spatial urban shrinkage.” Employing the vacant house ratio in order to explain spatial urban shrinkage enables us to clarify the multiple factors relating to shrinking cities because vacant housing is associated with the built-environment and dwelling intentions of local residents. Along with vacant housing, there are various types of socio-economic and built-environment factors. Therefore, it is impossible to explain the dynamics of cities using a simple factor. However, we could explain spatial urban shrinkage with the use of vacant housing to some extent, by using several important factors so that more detailed discussion is possible regarding the dynamics of vacant housing. According to Figure 1, a change in social and political conditions transforms the dynamics of cities as an external stressor. This stress affects the socio-economic status of local residents which is associated with population decline. This dynamic change has a spatial impact on current land use, and finally vacant properties such as vacant housing would increase. Within the conceptual image of spatial urban shrinkage, some of the socio-economic and built- environment factors can be observed, and they are closely related to the vacant house ratio, which could be an indicator of spatial urban shrinkage. The purpose of the study is to clarify the regional differences in socio-economic and built-environment factors of vacant house ratio as a key indicator for spatial urban shrinkage. An increase in vacant housing is the result of a shortage of people to maintain the property. Therefore, vacant house ratio could be one of the indices indicating the extent to which urban shrinkage is or will be advancing. Hence, analyzing cities according to the ratio of vacant housing would provide us with suggestive results as an important indicator of spatial urban shrinkage. Then, we need to categorize cities into several types of regions. We define a region as a group of Figure 1. Conceptual image of cities which are considered to have similar spatial urban shrinkage characteristics. Cities located in the Tokyo Urban and Regional Planning Review Vol. 4, 2017 | 253 metropolitan area and cities located in rural areas have totally different socio-economic and built- environment characteristics, so identifying the characteristics of cities by region enables us to describe spatial urban shrinkage more precisely. After clarifying what kind of factors positively or negatively affect the vacant house ratio, this paper offers a possible way of predicting spatial urban shrinkage. Although there is no panacea to improve the quality of areas where spatial urban shrinkage is occurring, we are able to anticipate where shrinking cities will occur. In this study, all of the cities in Japan will be analyzed. Since the motivation of this study is to clarify the factors of spatial urban shrinkage in Japan, we should focus on the analysis unit, from which it is possible to acquire the data for the entire country and need not to gather all the detailed information such as age, structure, and floor area of each building. Therefore, we focused on a regional scale and adopted municipality as the analysis unit. However, due to the limited data available, we excluded the data from towns and villages. We also excluded the cities with a population of 500,000 or more granted special rights by government ordinance for the following reason. We would like to focus on cities which are expected to suffer from urban shrinkage. Most of the cities with a population of 500,000 or more granted special rights by government ordinance are expected to experience a population growth, and a significant number of local residents commute to such cities. If we include the cities with a population of 500,000 or more granted special rights by government ordinance in the three major UEAs, different characteristics of cities are mixed together, and we cannot clarify the characteristics of the cities, where urban shrinkage is happening. We also would like to compare several types of regions under the condition of a similar city scale, so that we can consider the regional differences in the factors affecting the vacant house ratio. Therefore, the cities with a population of 500,000 are regarded as outliers compared with the other cities. Finally, 771 cities were obtained as analysis units. Using such cities, we are capable of conducting trans-regional analyses in order to articulate the geographical differences of spatial urban shrinkage. 2. Literature review 2.1. Shrinking city studies In several countries in Europe, urban shrinkage has started ahead of Japan. Therefore, researchers have been trying to clarify drivers pushing urban shrinkage in multiple study areas. In Germany, whose cities are suffering from urban shrinkage, economic disparity and declining birth rate are significant drivers (Wiechmann 2012) [7]. Several cities in the United States have shrunken because of long-term industrial transformation (Wiechmann 2012; Schilling and Logan 2008) [8]. Japan also encounters similar kinds of drivers such as declining birth rate and increased concentration of population in major metropolitan areas (Martinez-Fernandez et al. 2016) [9]. Generally, most of the causes and effects of urban shrinkage have been clarified, but the causes and effects differ depending on the countries. Recently, a multitude of field investigations on urban shrinkage have been carried out, and such single case studies have brought about many meaningful causes and effects (Rink et al 2012; Haase et al. 2012) [10, 11]. For instance, Bontje (2005) [12] investigated in detail the relationship between urban shrinkage and the city government responses in Leipzig, and suggested development strategies for post-socialist cities. Although such case studies describe detailed but specific features of urban shrinkage, the context and dynamics of the phenomenon on a large scale should be focused on as well (Grossmann et al. 2013) [13]. Haase et al. (2014) [14] conceptualized urban shrinkage including such context and dynamics. It is a theoretical framework which Urban and Regional Planning Review Vol. 4, 2017 | 254 includes causes, impacts, responses, and feedback loops. The author argues that the framework does not explain all the types of shrinkage, but it helps researchers discover the time-space context of urban shrinkage in study areas. Consequently, drivers of urban shrinkage vary depending on the cities. There are many studies discovering drivers in single study areas, but the dynamic relationships between drivers in cities need to be researched further. 2.2. Current situation of vacant housing and lots as an emerging phenomenon of spatial urban shrinkage in Japan As we mentioned above, shrinking cities are increasing in Japan.