&nbsp;Recent year, vacant properties and its negative effects have become severe issues in Japan. Japan government has formulated new law to demolish dilapidated houses, but its effectiveness is limited against vacant properties issue.<br>&nbsp;On the other hand, in the United States, there are some cities trying to create &ldquo;Shrinking&rdquo; master plan from the middle of 2000s, especially in Michigan and other Rust Belt cities.<br>&nbsp;In the urban shrinkage, it is difficult to achieve consensus on the shrinking city policy between the government and local residents, because there are some detriments such as relocation, cutting of infrastructures and public services.<br>&nbsp;The Purpose of this study is to clarify the methodology for consensus building in the planning process of master plan and zoning code in U.S. shrinking cities.<br>&nbsp;The city of Flint, MI is the one of the shrinking cities in the United States. Flint has experienced the profound population decline since the end of 1970s. They have lost 48% population in 50 years and suffered from huge amount of vacant properties.<br>&nbsp;In 2013, the city of Flint started to update the master plan using federal grant and the support of local urban planners from Genesee County Land Bank Authority and the foundation. A lot of residents living in Flint were engaged in this process. Finally, an updated master plan named &ldquo;Master Plan for A Sustainable Flint&rdquo; was completed in 2013 introducing a new zoning code called Green Innovation (GI) Area. After that, the city of Flint started to discuss the zoning code based on the updated master plan.<br>&nbsp;We focus on the success factors of those processes, and the following points are suggested.<br>&nbsp;1) In the case of Flint, the city government got a lot of agreement from residents by using community engagement process. To get enough agreement from public, the city involved a lot of residents and local groups in housing assessment and workshops. As the result, it did work as educational process for the public to understand the current situation of the city and importance of urban planning.<br>&nbsp;2) Green Innovation area is the zoning that supports neighborhood stabilization for the residents in the short-term, and in the long-term, it contributes for cost reduction for the government. The GI area is a flexible zone. It could be a zone to adopt the reinvestment, if not, it could be a green field.<br>&nbsp;3) On the other hand, there are difficulties to introduce land use regulation by zoning code ordinance, especially GI area. Because it would violate existing residents' right to housing. It means that it is difficult to limit people's right to build houses in high vacancy area or the area with low land value, even if it locates in the shrinking cities.<br>&nbsp;4) But the government can respond to that concerns by administrative procedure working with planning commission. For existing residents, the city of Flint decided to give the permission to rebuild the house, if the house was located in GI area. After that, the city also tried to create criteria to give permission for new single family housing development in GI areas. But this attempt was failed because of the opposition of local politicians. As a result, the city decided to use the criteria of GN areas as criteria for permission of new housing development in GI areas.<br>&nbsp;After the master plan approval, for GCLBA and some CDCs and Local groups, it became possible to align their work with the master plan and spend their resources effectively. Master plan is shared broadly and utilized as a useful framework in Flint.