Holding one iconic vision with all citizens is essential to make long-term efforts in tarnsforming a city structure and synchronizing a variety of individual capital projects and operation programs delivered by several public-private stakeholders.

Major developers, key landholders, and academic institutes along new rail lines were involved in not merely raising urban capital funds for short-term profits but rather establishing transit-oriented townships in the long run. Many of these private stakeholders have provided high-quality urban settings and state-of-the-art smart technologies around stations, as motivated to take advantage of the accessibility benefits brought by new rail development and maximize their own asset values with a good image of town management.

A good example of this is Kashiwanoha Campus Station where Mitsui Fudosan Corporation, a real estate giant originally owned the former golf course, reinvested in a new shopping mall, residential tower packages, and community health centers, including the innovative elements of Smart City. The area energy management system invented by advanced technology companies connects building facilities (e.g. commercial and residential buildings, offices, hotels) and electrical facilities (e.g. solar panels, batteries) through a smart grid, which interchange electrical power inside the district cost-efficiently and reserve backup power in cases of natural disasters.

Local governments along a new suburban line can play a pivotal role in land assemblage for both railway and housing development. Under market freehold systems, inclusive land adjustment schemes can be effective to economize urban infrastructure costs and produce transit-oriented built environments together with new rail stations, if land use planning and development incentives are attractive enough for individual landholders to make contributions to the districts designated.

A “special” land readjustment approach was introduced, aiming to supply a large volume of new housing lots into the high-demand market together with fast rail infrastructure and services to and from central Tokyo. Public entities could proactively obtain land parcels contributed by individual private land-holders through the land readjustment scheme. Upon an approval of the project, the contributed land parcels were partially replotted for the railway facility uses transferred to the former Railway Construction Agency at the assessment price, while the other contributed parcels were sold for private property development around newly coming stations, leading to land acquisition cost savings, promoting transit oriented developments, and ensuring sufficient volume of passengers soon after operation.

A multimodal transportation terminal should accommodate facilities and services catering to a range of travel needs. Indoor space of Busta Shinjuku contains 146 seats, multiuse toilets, nursery rooms, coin lockers, ATMs, and ticket service counters for waiting and transferring passengers. Electric displays also provide real-time information on bus schedules, service destinations, and operation statuses. In addition to these basic equipment and services, it also makes available various convenient amenities for travelers, such as baggage/parcel delivery, cloak, foreign money exchange, travel ticket sales, and free internet access. Furthermore, the terminal’s tourist information center covers multi-lingual travel information on Tokyo and other cities across the country in English, Chinese, and Korean.

The development of a modern integrated terminal usually includes superior indoor amenities for transit passengers. The terminal’s indoor pedestrian circulation system should be associated with the seamless improvement of outdoor environments. In the case of Busta Shinjuku, the project embraces creation of district-wide pedestrian environments encompassing the transit complex.  it widened sidewalks along the national roadway and constructed an underground passage connected to the terminal and railway stations  as well as office and commercial buildings by collaborating with privatized railway companies.

Busta Shinjuku was developed by the national government as part of a new road bridge on an artificial ground area of about 1.47 ha. The new facility joins multiple transit functions (e.g. a gateway to the railway station, an expressway bus terminal, and a taxi pool) and handles a wide range of intercity bus lines seamlessly. Importantly, this terminal was jointly developed with the East Japan Railway Company, one of the country’s largest privatized railway companies. The company also built a 170-meter-tall building adjacent to the terminal. This tower accommodates many offices and commercial tenants, open air green spaces, cultural facilities, a nursery, a medical clinic, and a farm garden. Also, the government collaborated with multiple private service providers to make available various convenient amenities for travelers in and around the terminal.

An underground passage was newly constructed to connect the Shinjuku Station area near Busta Shinjuku extensively with another subway station operated by Tokyo Metro. With this 150-meter pathway, passengers can smoothly get access to and from the multimodal transit complex on foot without being stuck in pedestrian congestion or passing across car traffic.

As part of a larger effort to assess the socio-economic impacts of GEF-funded Protected Areas, the Tourism Economic Model for Protected Areas (TEMPA) was developed to help guide project managers and others in the collection, analysis and display of tourism spending data using an easy to use spreadsheet-based tool, which is also provided. Despite the fact that economic impact analysis has been applied in many countries, such as, USA, Canada, Australia, Finland,  Namibia, and South Africa, this preliminary version of the tool and accompanying spreadsheet represents an initial step in a longer process of testing and refining TEMPA in a wide range of protected area categories globally. At present, TEMPA has been tested only in one selected park in Southern Africa, and nationally for Brazil. Results show significant direct and indirect economic gains from parks at the local and national level. It is hoped that the widespread use of tools such as TEMPA can continue to build from this effort to highlight the important multi-faceted role that protected areas play in supporting nature and livelihoods.

The programme utilized two main strategies for livelihood diversification to improve household incomes and nutrition:

• Promoting women group-based Village Community Banking (VICOBA) in an approach that encourages micro-saving and borrowing to enhance financial security and promote business, particularly trade in small stock.
• Identifying villages with sufficient water resources and introducing shared community vegetable and fruit gardens to enhance nutrition (provide alternative source of vitamins) in an area with acute shortage of fruits and vegetables. The fruits and vegetables were sourced by the organization from the national Horticultural Research Institute where varieties specifically breeded for the agro-ecological conditions in Mt. Kulal were selected. Successful production of fruits and vegetables would also lead to selling of surplus thus generating household income.

The Mt. Kulal landscape consists of eight different villages spread out around the biosphere and depending on the shared ecosystems and rich biodiversity within the landscape. This leads to competition for shared resources and conflicts. The project worked with local administration and leadership to revive peace committees within the communities and link them together across the landscape to create inter-community peace committee that can meet periodically to plan sustainable management of shared pastureland and water resources, resolve disputes, and provide leadership in resource governance to reduce and prevent degradation of local ecosystems and biodiversity. Through this structure peace meetings were organized where communities openly discussed their grievances, challenges, and how to address issues around sustainable grazing land management.

Along with restoration, rangeland ecosystem management techniques were integrated with local customary knowledge and approaches to enhance sustainable management of shared grazing lands. The ecosystem management process aimed to conserve major ecological rangeland services and restore natural resources while meeting the socio-economic and cultural needs of local communities. Some of the approaches employed included:

• Creation of community environmental management committees, training them and equipping them for rangeland resource governance.
• Integrating local knowledge and customary practices in development of local rangeland management by-laws and codes of conduct.
• Integrating sustainable resource use of all rangeland resources including shrubs, grasses, water resources, and local wildlife through adoption of conservation techniques coupled with entrenchment of traditionally sustainable grazing patterns.
• Linking local environmental management committees with county technical resource pattern from relevant departments for sustainable support and strong resource governance.