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During the twentieth century, Japan was transformed from a poor, primarily rural country into one of the world's largest industrial powers and most highly urbanised countries. Interestingly, while Japanese governments and planners borrowed carefully from the planning ideas and methods of many other countries, Japanese urban planning, urban governance and cities developed very differently from those of other developed countries. Japan's distinctive patterns of urbanisation are partly a product of the highly developed urban system, urban traditions and material culture of the pre-modern period, which remained influential until well after the Pacific War. A second key influence has been the dominance of central government in urban affairs, and its consistent prioritisation of economic growth over the public welfare or urban quality of life. André Sorensen examines Japan's urban trajectory from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, paying particular attention to the weak development of Japanese civil society, local governments, and land development and planning regulations.
For the first time in human history, more than half the world’s population is urban. A fundamental aspect of this transformation has been the emergence of giant cities, or megacities, that present major new challenges. This book examines how issues of megacity development, urban form, sustainability, and unsustainability are conceived, how governance processes are influenced by these ideas, and how these processes have in turn influenced outcomes on the ground, in some cases in transformative ways. Through 15 in-depth case studies by prominent researchers from around the world, this book examines the major challenges facing megacities today. The studies are organized around a shared set of...
Over the past two decades, Japan’s socioeconomic environment has undergone considerable changes prompted by both a long recession and the relaxation of particular labour laws in the 1990s and 2000s. Within this context, "freeters", part-time workers aged between fifteen and thirty-four who are not housewives or students, emerged into the public arena as a social problem. This book, drawing on six years of ethnographic research, takes the lives of male freeters as a lens to examine contemporary ideas and experiences of adult masculinities. It queries how notions of adulthood and masculinity are interwoven and how these ideals are changing in the face of large-scale employment shifts. Highli...
This thoroughly updated second edition of Modern Japan provides a concise and fascinating introduction to the social, cultural and political history of modern Japan. Ranging from the Tokugawa period to the present day, the book charts the country's evolution into a modernized, economic and political world power. Dealing with a broad and stimulating range of topics in an engaging style that will appeal to university students and the general reader, this book weaves social and political developments and balances a micro with a macro approach, introducing details about everyday lives that shed light on the bigger picture of major historical changes. Its systematic attention to gender issues, minorities and popular culture distinguishes this history and contributes to a sense of the complexity and diversity of modern Japanese society. Completely up-to-date and including many new images and a timeline that charts important events, this highly accessible and comprehensive textbook is an essential resource for students, scholars and teachers of Japanese history, politics culture and society.
Why plan? How and what do we plan? Who plans for whom? These three questions are then applied across three major topics in planning: States, Markets, and the Provision of Social Goods; The Methods and Substance of Planning; and Agency, Implementation, and Decision Making.
This book explores how and why civic spaces are used by different communities in different cities of Asia in terms of their contribution to urban governance and public participation, and what role they play in the support or demise of communities.
This volume explores the conceptualization and construction of sacred space in a wide variety of faith traditions: Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and the religions of Japan. It deploys the notion of "layered landscapes" in order to trace the accretions of praxis and belief, the tensions between old and new devotional patterns, and the imposition of new religious ideas and behaviors on pre-existing religious landscapes in a series of carefully chosen locales: Cuzco, Edo, Geneva, Granada, Herat, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Kanchipuram, Paris, Philadelphia, Prague, and Rome. Some chapters hone in on the process of imposing novel religious beliefs, while others focus on how vestiges of displac...
This popular text mixes classic theory and research on urban politics with the most recent developments and data in urban and metropolitan affairs. Its balanced and realistic approach helps students understand the nature of urban politics and the difficulty of finding effective "solutions" in a suburban and global age. The ninth edition has been thoroughly rewritten and updated with a continued focus on economic development and race, plus renewed attention to globalization, gentrification, and changing demographics. Boxed case studies of prominent recent and current urban development efforts provide material for class discussion, and concluding material demonstrates the tradeoff between more...
For the first time in human history, the majority of the world's population is now no longer living in rural areas, but in cities. Whereas in the industrialised countries urban and transport development has now reached a certain degree of saturation, it is proceeding in other regions of the world with an enormous dynamism. The primary concern of this study is to present for the first time a survey of global urban and transport development in order to gain an overview of the magnitude of the global challenges. Against this background, the study concludes by proposing a direction for future deliberations, in the name of determining an adequate response to the looming problems. Oliver Schwedes has the professorship in Integrated Transport Planning at the Technische Universität Berlin in Germany. His research areas include urban and transport policy and planning. Ebook Download
First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.