regeneration of retail agglomeration and reorganization of 'local retail system' in Japan: focusing on the case of Marugamemachi market, Takamatsu-city

The smaller the scale of city is, the weaker the impact of conventional market is. In Japan, we could see the rapidly urbanized cities which were occurred by economic development in 1970's. Through 'lost decade' in 1990's, however, local cities have been recessed rapidly and seriously, and the central areas of local cities have been weakened as well. Moreover, the growth of other retail types like Hypermarket, GMS, Supercenter which are usually located in suburb area, has fomented the recession of central area. Recently the concept of Compact City is getting attention and it is discussed that retail agglomeration's function should be strengthened for the regeneration of central area, so government is carrying out various kinds of subsidies and support program, however, its effect and evaluation are not good so far. I introduce the case of Marugamemahci market in Takamatsu city. Takamatsu is the capital of Kagawa prefecture which is the smallest prefecture in Japan. This small city which has only 0.4 million population, however, undertook redevelopment project on unprecedented way that was started from changing the conventional system on retail agglomeration. In Japan, mostly the shop owners do their business on their own property, and conventional market is composed of them. Therefore, even though they organized associations (by district), it's very hard to get started joint business or joint events together because the associations have no authority to force them to take part in. And this situation is the biggest obstacle against redevelopment. Especially local retail agglomerations in Japan have suffered from declining, so there have studied in various ways how to revitalize them. The Marugamemachi's case is meaningful for its redevelopment way. The association of Marugamemachi market adopted unprecedented system (='lease') that separates using right from ownership of property, and made it for association possible to control districts in the conventional market. Following this case, I could see how 'local retail system' has been set up and how the system works on this redevelopment scheme. Marugamemachi market is still under redevelopment, however, I think that this case implies how each retail agglomeration builds its own 'local retail system' and the possibility of regeneration of local retail agglomerations.