With the increasing demand for social and policy measures to address population decline and local extinction crisis, support policies for population decline areas have expanded since 2017, primarily under the leadership of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety. In November 2021, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety designated 89 areas as population decline areas based on the Population Decline Index. In December of the same year, Articles 22 through 29 were newly established in the "Local Autonomy Finance Management Act,“ introducing the "Fund to Respond to Local Extinction" to be supported by the central government for the years 2022 to 2023. However, the current Fund to Respond to Local Extinction faces challenges in providing strategic responses tailored to the specific characteristics of each region, mainly due to limitations in objective, specialized analysis of regional issues, insufficient spatial planning guidelines, and underdeveloped support systems. As a result, this hinders the appropriateness, diversity, and practicality of regional projects and makes it difficult to carry out differentiated projects that reflect regional conditions and spatial characteristics. In this context, this study aims to grasp the current issues in population decline areas arising from the existing urban structure centered on quantitative growth and population and social changes. It also seeks to develop a regional diagnostic system for effective urban management. Furthermore, the study intends to propose policy directions and institutional improvements suitable for regional characteristics to address regional depopulation and promote regional revitalization. To achieve these objectives, we will conduct the research through the following two research questions.

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