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This paper examines the governance of agrivoltaics (AV) in the context of Japan’s rapid rural depopulation and farmland abandonment. While AV is traditionally framed as a solution to land-use competition, this study argues that in shrinking regions, the primary challenge is not land scarcity but a shortage of human capacity to manage...

Local-level follow-up and review (FUR) is essential for realising the 2030 Agenda, given municipalities' crucial role in delivering SDG targets. However, Japanese municipalities face significant challenges, including capacity constraints, demographic shifts, financial limitations, and the absence of mandatory national SDG directives. This policy...

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...

This is the final report of the city-to-city collaboration between EU cities (including one from the UK) and Japanese cities under the International Urban and Regional Cooperation (IURC) Asia and Australasia. During 2021-2023, thirteen EU cities (including one UK city) from ten countries and ten Japanese cities participated in the project and...

Nationwide ageing and dramatic depopulation threaten the survival of many Japanese small-sized towns and villages. To address this challenge—which is not unique but that in Japan is compounded by uneven urbanization patterns and increasing ruptures within the socioeconomic order—the Government of Japan is encouraging municipalities to adopt a pro...

The transport sector is one of the main sources of global GHG emissions, of which road transport emissions are greatest. The decarbonisation of road transport requires systemic changes combined with technological interventions to optimise the use of transport modes. Given the diverse options for road transport decarbonisation due to differences in...

Fernando Ortiz-Moya, urbanist working at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), explores the role of VLRs (Voluntary Local Review) in building better cities and what Tokyo is doing to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

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...