A fire destroys a neighbourhood in Itoigawa City, Niigata in 2016.

The government is in the process of making a potential revision to the Building Standards Act that could provide an extra 10% to the building footprint ratio in quasi-fire prevention districts. The goal of the revision is to encourage the reconstruction of older, non-fireproof buildings.

Under the proposed revision, if an older building in a quasi-fire prevention district is replaced with a fireproof or quasi-fireproof building, an extra 10% may be added to the footprint ratio (called the kenpeiritsu). This would mean that a building built on a 100 sqm block of land in a zone with a 60% footprint ratio could cover up to 70 sqm of the land instead of the original limit of 60 sqm. A ratio of up to 100% is already possible for fireproof buildings built in fire prevention districts in Commercial Zones.

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