Shrinking Cities

This presentation examines how Japanese municipalities are responding to long-term population decline, contrasting Yubari City’s failed growth-centric approach with Shimokawa Town’s efforts to ‘shrink gracefully.’ It highlights how local governments can move beyond pro-growth planning by adopting sustainable, community-oriented strategies better...

This article examines the implications of demographic decline for local governments, with a focus on small Japanese municipalities that are already navigating the challenges of population loss. Drawing on examples like Yubari, Suzu, and Manazuru, it explores how some towns are rethinking growth-oriented planning and experimenting with alternative...

Although the suburbs of numerous cities worldwide are shrinking, research on how to address suburban decline remains scarce. This paper explores participatory mapping in shrinking suburbs as a tool to articulate knowledge co-creation between local officials and communities to inform planning decisions. The paper argues that participatory planning...

As more countries witness depopulation, the expansion of High-Speed Rail (HSR) to reach shrinking cities in peripheral regions is renewing the debate on the effects of this infrastructure. This is the case in Japan, a country that continues to extend its highly developed HSR network hoping to curb regional decline. This paper investigates whether...

Japan’s severe population decline is seriously threatening the sustainability of many of the country’s municipalities. In a desperate run for survival, all levels of government have hurried to apply strategies aiming at stopping decay and the development of new infrastructure is met with particularly high expectations for new prosperity. That is...

While shrinkage has been a debated topic in regional studies in the last decade, the shock brought by Covid-19 on the global economy adds further concerns for cities and regions already suffering from depopulation. As a result, a review of existing planning approaches and policies is necessary to inform change and support the future of cities and...

Urban shrinkage contradicts the normative assumption of cities as growth machines. Shrinking cities are stigmatised as outcasts of urban systems, prone to high unemployment rates, low quality of life standards, and urban blight. Compelled by this dominant narrative of loss, planning responses have focused on reversing declining trajectories and...