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Rural Planning Lab
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The lab takes a planning perspective to rebuild the connections between land and people in farming and mountain villages.
AboutAbout the lab
The study of envisioning the future of rural areas.
The lab studies, from the perspective of planning theory, how farming and mountain village areas should develop as they are affected by globalization.
Because farming and mountain villages are strongly shaped by local conditions, they find it hard to adapt to environmental change, and various distortions and frictions arise.
The lab's topics include the direction of endogenous regional development, rational social infrastructure development for farming and mountain villages, and systems of cooperation between urban and rural areas.
It is a practical and interdisciplinary field that starts from local issues and builds tools that help solve them.
Key terms
- Knowledge management
- An approach in which the knowledge held within individuals' experience is shared across an organization and handed down to the next generation
- Social capital
- A characteristic of a society that can stimulate cooperative behavior among people and thereby raise the efficiency of society
- Multi-agent simulation
- A method in which behavioral rules are given to many individual actors, who are then set in motion, and the resulting change in the whole system is calculated
NewsLab news
Professor Takeyama was named a Fellow of the Japan Society of Agricultural Engineering
Professor Takeyama received the Excellent Paper Award of the Japanese Society of Irrigation, Drainage and Rural Engineering (JSIDRE) Awards for fiscal 2024
ResearchResearch themes
The lab grasps the issues of farming and mountain village areas through fieldwork, analyzes them with engineering methods, and links the findings to policy recommendations. The scope of planning is broad, ranging from how land and regional resources are used to how relationships among residents are built.
*Illustrative imagePassing on tacit knowledge in managing regional resources
The management of irrigation ponds is supported by the tacit knowledge that managers have built up through years of activity. To prepare for the possibility that this knowledge is not passed on and disappears, the lab explores ways to transfer it using the approach of knowledge management.
*Illustrative imageCommunity mutual support and the direct payment program
Whether measures to revitalize less-favored areas work well depends on whether residents can cooperate with one another. The lab examines the relationship with social capital, which consists of trust, norms of reciprocity and networks.
*Illustrative imageComputational portraits of the future of regional agriculture
In planning for regional agriculture, it is essential to predict and present future scenarios under various conditions. The lab builds models that predict the mobilization of farmland and land use through multi-agent simulation.
*Illustrative imageMaking plans that get residents moving
Planning theory has two aspects: planning technology, which pursues rationality in problem solving, and behavioral science, which aims to help residents share a vision and raise their motivation through the planning process. The lab is developing a new planning theory that incorporates the latter as well.
MembersFaculty
- ProfessorEmi Takeyama
- Associate ProfessorKenichiro Onitsuka
- Assistant ProfessorAkiko Higashiguchi
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images. Cropped CC BY-SA images are provided under the same CC BY-SA license as the original (version shown on each line).
- Top image: “Kyoto Toin Koshihata Rice Fields 2013-09” At by At / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Passing on tacit knowledge in managing regional resources: “Kanayama Tameike Pond 02” Indiana jo / CC0 (cropped)
- Community mutual support and the direct payment program: “Rice terraces ridge masonry in Kasuga Village” Indiana jo / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Computational portraits of the future of regional agriculture: “Murmuration 11-2025” Skander zarrad / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Making plans that get residents moving: “Chiiori irori floor hearths” Alex Kerr / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (水資源利用工学): “Heiwa Irrigation 1910 B” 作者不詳 / Public domain (cropped)
- Related lab (水環境工学): “Creek in wheat fields in Honjo, Saga” Peka / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (農業システム工学): “Tractor cultivating a field in Brittany” PtiBzh / CC0 (cropped)
- Related lab (フィールドロボティクス): “John Deere Combine Harvester Ebing 1799” Ermell / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
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