Evolution and methodology of Japanese machizukuri for the improvement of living environments.

Machizukuri emerged as a way for residents to solve local community problems autonomously and, throughout the past half century, it has experienced a unique development process. This paper describes its history, the various methods accumulated through continuous practice, and its achievements and prospects, as follows. Section  presents the context in which Japanese machizukuri was born. Even though similar trends appeared all over the world in response to the turbulent social context in the latter half of the 1960s, unique conditions in Japan gave way to a specific approach, which is today called machizukuri. Section  presents its evolutive process, from the birth of machizukuri until the present. Studying the development of particular systems, methods, designs, and planning techniques over time, three generations can be identified. Section  addresses the research and practical development of machizukuri as developed by the author of this paper. Finally, Section  describes and summarizes the future prospects and challenges of machizukuri. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]