This book provides perspectives on depopulated areas and regional social capital from positivistic field surveys. Among the developed countries of the world, Japan has a very small amount of national land, with almost 70% of it being in mountainous locations. Concentration of populations and economic capital into large metropolitan areas along with many depopulated and population-aged regions in the mountainous parts can be seen in the country. A very clear regional disparity has arisen in Japan, especially since the era of its high economic growth. This book also offers critical suggestions for the shrinking societies of the developed world in the era of Society 5.0, the fifth stage of society where economic development is achieved and social issues are resolved by the fusion of cyber and physical space. To begin, the book refers to an outline of depopulation and depopulated areas in Japan. Then, it deals with issues of depopulation, out-migration from a mountainous village, revitalization of local industries, and maintenance of daily living functions in these areas. This book is suitable for students and scholars of the social sciences, regional planners, staffs of government offices, members of NPOs, general citizens, and the many other people who are interested in sustainability of a region and a community in a shrinking social environment.

From the authors of the bestselling The Big Shift, a provocative argument that the global population will soon begin to decline, dramatically reshaping the social, political, and economic landscape. For half a century, statisticians, pundits, and politicians have warned that a burgeoning planetary population will soon overwhelm the earth's resources. But a growing number of experts are sounding a different kind of alarm. Rather than growing exponentially, they argue, the global population is headed for a steep decline. Throughout history, depopulation was the product of catastrophe: ice ages, plagues, the collapse of civilizations. This time, however, we're thinning ourselves deliberately, by choosing to have fewer babies than we need to replace ourselves. In much of the developed and developing world, that decline is already underway, as urbanization, women's empowerment, and waning religiosity lead to smaller and smaller families. In Empty Planet, Ibbitson and Bricker travel from South Florida to Sao Paulo, Seoul to Nairobi, Brussels to Delhi to Beijing, drawing on a wealth of research and firsthand reporting to illustrate the dramatic consequences of this population decline--and to show us why the rest of the developing world will soon join in. They find that a smaller global population will bring with it a number of benefits: fewer workers will command higher wages; good jobs will prompt innovation; the environment will improve; the risk of famine will wane; and falling birthrates in the developing world will bring greater affluence and autonomy for women. But enormous disruption lies ahead, too. We can already see the effects in Europe and parts of Asia, as aging populations and worker shortages weaken the economy and impose crippling demands on healthcare and social security. The United States is well-positioned to successfully navigate these coming demographic shifts--that is, unless growing isolationism and anti-immigrant backlash lead us to close ourselves off just as openness becomes more critical to our survival than ever before. Rigorously researched and deeply compelling, Empty Planet offers a vision of a future that we can no longer prevent--but one that we can shape, if we choose.

As the European Union continues to struggle to establish a common agenda on tackling social problems, this compelling book presents a set of comparative sociological studies in southern European countries from leading scholars working in the region. It widens the debate by looking at the specific social problems of southern Europe and highlights the shared trends and critical regional disparities that may improve our understanding of Mediterranean welfare states.

Whether a natural event turns into a disaster depends on the severity of the hazard as well as the condition of the social sphere of its potential victims, i.e., vulnerability. We focus on regional vulnerability considering the fact that regional socioeconomic conditions determine the aspects of the damage and thus the risk management policy. This book provides the theory and methodology to understand and cope with regional vulnerability through an interdisciplinary approach. The fields mainly included in this work are welfare and environmental economics, the planning and management area of civil engineering, and risk management. In particular, we focus on hazard and vulnerability surrounding water issues and provide readers with knowledge of how the regional analysis is incorporated into the vulnerability analysis. Also considered is what risk management should be when the diversified regional background of the vulnerability is taken into account. A feature of this book is that it provides contrastive regional coverage: the vulnerability of a developed country—urban and regional areas of Japan—and that of a developing country, Bangladesh. The contents consist of three parts: (1) Socioeconomic Vulnerability in a Regional Perspective, (2) Evaluation of Regional Vulnerability, and (3) Coping with Regional Vulnerability. This book is highly recommended to researchers who need an up-to-date and interdisciplinary approach to deal with risk management where regional vulnerability plays an important role.

In recent decades Japan has changed from a strongly growing, economically successful nation regarded as prime example of social equality and inclusion, to a nation with a stagnating economy, a shrinking population and a very high proportion of elderly people. Within this, new forms of inequality are emerging and deepening, and a new model of Japan as 'gap society' (kakusa shakai) has become common-sense. These new forms of inequality are complex, are caused in different ways by a variety of factors, and require deep-seated reforms in order to remedy them. This book provides a comprehensive overview of inequality in contemporary Japan. It examines inequality in labour and employment, in welfare and family, in education and social mobility, in the urban-rural divide, and concerning immigration, ethnic minorities and gender. The book also considers the widespread anxiety effect of the fear of inequality; and discusses how far these developments in Japan represent a new form of social problem for the wider world.

This book attempts to provide insights into the achievement of a sustainable urban form, through spatial planning and implementation; here, we focus on planning experiences at the levels of local cities and some metropolitan areas in Asian countries. This book investigates the impact of planning policy on spatial planning implementation, from multidisciplinary viewpoints encompassing land-use patterns, housing development, transportation, green design, and agricultural and ecological systems in the urbanization process. We seek to learn from researchers in an integrated multidisciplinary platform that reflects a variety of perspectives, such as economic development, social equality, and ecological protection, with a view to achieving a sustainable urban form.​