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The symposium focused on mapping the interstellar media and other components in galactic disks, bulges, halos, and central regions of galaxies. Thanks to recent progress in observations using radio interferometers and optical/infrared telescopes in ground and space, our knowledge on structures of our Galaxy and nearby galaxies has been growing for the last decade. Yet we do not fully understand the physics behind the observational results, and a number of questions still remain: What is the origin of spiral structure?; How should the global star formation rate be determined?; What causes the differences between our Galaxy and other nearby galaxies?; What differentiates galaxies with starburst/AGN activity from normal galaxies?

In the next decade, we will have next-generation instruments, such as ALMA, JWST, TMT, OWL, SPICA, etc.. With these telescopes, complete multi-wavelength data at high resolution will become available on the structures in our Galaxy and nearby galaxies. In the symposium, we had a comprehensive discussion on what has been learned so far, what are the major outstanding issues, and how we can physically understand them.

The symposium covers the following topics, mainly focusing on mapping observations and related observational and theoretical studies: Our Galaxy -- mass distribution (spiral arms, stellar bar and halo), global and local ISM, supermassive black holes and its environment at the center; Central part of nearby galaxies -- ISM around starbursts, AGNs, fueling mechanism; Nearby Galaxies -- moleculargas distribution and star formation, gas dynamics, origin of starburst; Galactic environment and evolution -- formation of our Galaxy, environmental effect on galactic morphology, origin of supermassive blackholes; The Nature of the Dark Matter component and its effects on the internal structures of galaxies.