Shinkansen

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...