NOBUYUKI MINO

areas and facilities use of mobility impaired people on takino suzuran hillside national park was discussed. Monitoring results of activity surveys for wheel chair users, powered wheel chair users, stick users and stroller users showed that powered wheel chair greatly contributed to improve accessibility of park facilities and programs. On the other hand, many facilities were still difficult for wheel chair user. These results were considered that various assistive technologies and management on walking distance would be effective tools for making accessible park.

GIS analysis applied to understand barrier-free environment at a regional scale. Significant regional inequalities in wheel-chair accessibilities and lack of linkage among the barrier infrastructures were identified through our analysis. Especially small-sized dairy facilities have tend to exclude from easy access areas. Poor accessibility to various facilities is the most serious barrier for segments of the disabled and aged population. Recent demographic trends in Japan make the accessibility improvement a compelling one. In the future regional planning, a holistic approach should be applied to accessibility inequalities, with the goal of reducing regional disparities in barrier free environment.

In this paper, the rural - urban integration through the use of allotment gardens was discussed. We investigated the allotment gardens users attributes, frequency in use, time-distance, contributable factors to users satisfaction, by the interview with 438 urban and rural allotment gardens participants. Results show that 1) Users age composition of urban allotment gardens is biased to 50's and 60's, whereas that of rural allotment gardens is more evenly distributed. 2) Only the farm products and works positively contributed to urban users satisfaction, whereas, community ties and rural landscape also positively contributed to rural allotment gardens users satisfaction. Those findings suggest that allotment gardens in rural areas can play a significant role in the formation and maintenance of the rural ・ urban integration.