OSAKA -- For reasons of health and public relations, the Osaka Municipal Government is moving forward with plans to adopt an ordinance that would outlaw smoking on its most crowded streets.

Beginning next month, the city will carry out a survey in areas where there is heavy pedestrian traffic.

About 20 million yen has been allocated in the city's fiscal 2006 budget to study ways to make the streets, especially in the crowded Umeda and Nanba districts, smoke-free. City officials, including Mayor Junichi Seki, hope to enact an ordinance by 2007.