This study aimed to explore how to lead locals to join rural downtown regeneration projects on the basis of the downtown of Obuse Town located in Nagano Prefecture in Japan. What well depicts the outcome of Obuse Town Project joined by residents are revitalized downtown districts and open gardens. Actors that facilitated residents’ participation are administration, "a-la Obuse Co. Ltd. and "Machizukuri Institude of TUS and Obuse Town". "a-la- Obuse Co. Ltd. " is a middle support organization in the form of community business and "Machizukuri Institute of TUS and Obuse Town" is a professional research institute set by Tokyo University of Science and Obuse Town. This study presented activities, types and roles of residents’ participation in the rural town activation project that started in 2015 by researching the activities of residents, shop owners and students with regard to Obuse Town Project, administrative actions for their participation and activities of middle-level supportive institutions, which are exports' research groups.

Pro-environmental life styles, foundations of a collective civilization and preservation of our tradition at rural communities hold a great public profit value, of which importance has been strongly emphasized during last decade. Here, the environmental color is one of the most influential elements that determine the image of the rural landscape. Whenever an alternative color element is introduced to rural town, it is very important to examine its effect on the existing environmental color. Typically, a preference-surveying method has been used to evaluate the suitability of such environmental color balance. However, we note that the reliability of this method is limited by the subjectivity of a respondent. And thus, it is highly desirable to develop a more objective method. We propose a feasibility study for using an aesthetic-measure to evaluate the environmental color of a rural town. In this work, we looked into the validity of our approach by comparing its result with that of the preference-based-method as a way to determine the environmental color. Our study is based on 20 photo images from Ansung-city Yangsung-myeon Donghang 2ri Kyo-dong town in Kyongki Province.

This paper is to describe the characteristics of the Small Towns development in Rural China. The policies to develop Small Towns have been induced for solving the problem raised during the rural reform. The changes and adaptations of rural reform processes are integrated in Small Towns. The characteristics in the process of development of Ronggang, a small town, are as follows. First, it was the fund raised by rural inhabitants that was used for construction and development of the small town, Second, by implementing the policies of selective migration, the inhabitants of the small town have been differentiated from those of rural region. Third, the activities of commerce and industry of Ronggang have progressed to joint-stock system. Fourth, Having the spatial characteristics of self- development, the small town has grown and is expected to grow higher hierarchy of settlement system.