A COMPUTABLE MODEL FOR OPTIMIZING RESIDENTIAL RELOCATION BASED ON QUALITY OF LIFE AND SOCIAL COST IN BUILT-UP AREAS
Population aging and population decline, coupled with a saturation of the Japanese economy and declining fiscal revenue to maintain the existing infrastructure, pose particular problems in suburban areas. A new planning philosophy based on planned-retreat and planned re-concentration is described. To evaluate and identify suitable land areas, a tool for planning decision is provided. In this paper, the previously proposed framework (Kachi et al, 2005) is applied in order to identify the planned retreat and re-concentration areas with the index for social cost effectiveness of Quality of Life (QOL) derived from the given maximization problem. The case study of a rural small-sized city in Japan shows that the clustered urban spatial configuration is appropriate in terms of social cost effectiveness of QOL, although QOL in the suburban areas is higher than that of in the city center.
In this article the hedonic regression technique is used to estimate the value of traffic safety, using information from the Swedish market for automobiles. The results from the study show that the market price of an automobile is negatively correlated with its inherent risk level, i.e. Swedish car consumers pay a safety premium for safer cars. In comparison to previous Swedish stated-preference studies, this study reveals a lower willingness to pay for additional car safety, which might be a result of the interaction between government interventions and individual self-insurance and self-protection.