The Civil Engineering industry faces various challenges in our society, such as the rapidly declining birth rate and growing aging population, maintenance of infrastructure built during the period of high economic growth, and restoration after the Great East Japan Earthquake; and plays an important role in overcoming these challenges. In order to solve challenging issues in an efficient and timely manner with a priority for ensuring safety of the people, the Civil Engineering industry should place emphasis on "human resources". How to develop and secure excellent human resources, and create an environment where people can actively work with a feeling of "worth doing", is a significant challenge necessary for the development of the industry.
     
In addition, the general public, the end user of social infrastructure, consists of people with diverse values and in different positions. In order to solve the problems from the perspectives of the general public, we civil engineers should put ourselves in various positions and carefully consider such diverse values, become a positive force to solve conflicts and debates arising from the general public, and figure out the right direction. In order to realize this, the Civil Engineering industry should not be an industry that only people who meet certain requirements can join, and exclude people that do not meet the requirements. The Civil Engineering industry should create an inclusive environment that allows for differences of various values and opinions, nationality, restricted working hours due to childcare and nursing care responsibilities, etc. In other words, promoting diversity is very important and indispensable. 
   
Observing people with diverse talents and backgrounds working in the Civil Engineering industry actively and with much enthusiasm, the young generation who are considering career options may dream of "I also want to be like that! That is my career goal". We should always keep in mind that we adults are the "image of my future" in young people’s eyes.
  
Therefore, this special issue focuses on "promoting diversity".  It is our intention that this special issue "Promoting Diversity" will deliver a "dream" to the young generation, and contribute to the development of the whole Civil Engineering industry.