Events

Guest speaker: Fernando Ortiz-Moya, Assistant Professor, Waseda Institute for Advanced Study, Waseda University, Japan

Japan is shrinking. How are its cities and towns responding?

Traditionally, Japanese local governments, encouraged by national policy, have sought to halt or reverse their decline by luring urban migrants, increasing birth rates, attracting businesses, and curbing outmigration. This obsession with growth threatens to exhaust already limited resources, closing windows of opportunity for managing a soft landing.

Eventually, continuous shrinkage will force local governments to abandon growth-focused planning and redesign their communities: they must learn to shrink gracefully. Some municipalities are already charting this different course. This presentation argues that shrinking municipalities must break free from pro-growth strategies, embracing more sustainable approaches. These cities are putting socio-environmental concerns at the centre of their strategies, identifying new ways to transition successfully into smaller, sustainable communities.

Event sponsors:

School of Planning, Public Policy and Management; Department of Geography; Ecological Design Center; Global Studies Institute; Association of Pacific Rim Universities – Sustainable Cities and Landscapes Program; Center for Asian and Pacific Studies; and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI Grant

The Oregon Humanities Center presents a wine chat with Professor Eleonora Redaelli.

Who actually keeps American culture alive? We tend to picture artists, scholars, and museums — but a quiet, tangled web of federal, state, and local government has shaped the country’s cultural life for decades, usually without anyone noticing. Drawing on her book, Invisible Cultural Policy in America, Professor Eleonora Redaelli will trace how this patchwork system emerged, the debates that shaped how we think about arts, humanities, and historic preservation, and what it looks like on the ground — from Oregon to Minnesota, Maryland, and New Mexico.  

Join Professor Redaelli and the Oregon Humanities Center for a thoughtful discussion of this matter. Doors open at 5 p.m. Beverages and food will be available for purchase and light refreshments will be provided. There is ample parking at Banner Bank across the street. This event is free and open to the public. Please register at ohc.oregon.edu.