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Urban Planning Lab
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A lab that tackles environmental issues, disaster prevention, and population decline through urban planning and community development.
AboutAbout the lab
Envisioning urban space and exploring how to realize it
The Urban Planning Lab studies how to create and maintain cities and the living spaces that extend beyond them.
From the standpoint of urban planning, the lab addresses challenges such as reducing environmental impact, disaster prevention and mitigation, and adapting to population decline and a super-aged society.
Its main interests include visions of urban space and ways to realize them, changes in land use and urban form and how to influence them, and methods for industry, government, and citizens to collaborate in building and managing cities.
The lab also works on how to collect and represent the urban information this requires, as well as digital transformation (DX) for urban and community development.
Key terms
- Location Normalization Plan
- A plan in which a municipality designates the areas where housing, hospitals, shops, and other facilities will be concentrated, aiming for a well-organized, compact city
- Digital transformation (DX) for urban and community development
- Efforts to change how urban and community development is carried out by using digital technology and data
- Adaptation measures
- Measures to prepare for the effects of climate change, such as extreme heat and heavy rain, and to reduce the damage they cause
NewsLab news
Project Assistant Professor Inoue received the Paper Encouragement Award from the City Planning Institute of Japan
Professor Murayama became a Fellow of the Fellows Academy at the Japan Hub of Politecnico di Torino
The guide to undergraduate thesis research for fiscal year 2026 and the schedule of lab information sessions have been posted
A doctoral student and Professor Murayama received an Excellence Award in the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism's "Research on International Urban Policy"
ResearchResearch themes
The lab tackles challenges such as reducing environmental impact, disaster prevention and mitigation, and adapting to population decline and a super-aged society, through the planning of urban space and the means of realizing those plans. Its research themes include sustainable urban structure, district planning, urban planning theory, climate change measures, urban transformation, and cities and sports.
*Illustrative imageSustainable urban structure and means of realization
The lab studies how to formulate and evaluate plans related to metropolitan area planning, urban master plans, location normalization plans, and climate change measures. It also works on public transport-oriented development and on evaluating the sustainability of a city as a whole.
*Illustrative imageDistrict planning, design, and management
Research includes applying the district development frameworks EcoDistricts and Just Communities to community development in Japan, planning and designing urban areas where greenery, farmland, and housing are mixed, examining who will carry out such development, and evaluating the sustainability of districts.
*Illustrative imageUrban planning and theories of place
The lab studies the history and current challenges of planning theory, and the relationship between critical urban theory and urban planning. It analyzes place-based approaches to urban planning and also puts them into practice.
*Illustrative imageClimate change mitigation and adaptation
The lab examines long-term land use planning that takes the future impacts of climate change into account, as well as mitigation and adaptation measures suited to different urban forms. It is also developing community development techniques that use thermal environment simulation and carbon mapping.
MembersFaculty
The members of the Urban Planning Lab consist of faculty, project researchers and visiting researchers, secretaries, doctoral, master's, and undergraduate students, graduate special research students, and research students.As of 2026
- ProfessorMurayama AkitoPublications ↗
- Associate ProfessorTakuo InouePublications ↗
- ProfessorRikutaro ManabePublications ↗
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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: “JP-Tokyo-Area-Taken-From-Airplane” Kanchi1979 / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Sustainable urban structure and means of realization: “Kyoto Takasa” 犭 / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
- District planning, design, and management: “1st Productive Green Zone Matsushima 1-chōme Higashi-ku Fukuoka 20231016” Hirho / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Urban planning and theories of place: “SMALL STREET TOKYO 2017” Øyvind Holmstad / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Climate change mitigation and adaptation: “Atlanta thermal” NASA / Public domain (cropped)
- Related lab (International Urban and Regional Planning Lab): “Shanghai Urban Planning Museum city model 4” Tim Sheerman-Chase / CC BY 2.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Kato Lab): “Looking roughly east from Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office Building South Tower )” Joe Mabel on Flickr as Joe Mabel from Seattle, US This photo was taken with Nikon D5000 / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Regional Circular and Symbiotic Systems Lab): “Mt karousan 2016” Townphoto / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Landscape & Environmental Design Lab): “Aerial view of Lower Manhattan and Battery Park at dusk” SebastianBlumeArt / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
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