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