Rural Areas without Hope? Structural Change and Policy Options in Japan and Germany

Recently, the problems of declining rural areas have begun to receive widespread attention both in Japan and Germany. Ongoing depopulation of whole regions, demographic ageing, economic shrinkage and the pressure to downsize public infrastructure are issues of crucial importance. In Germany, the worst-case-scenario that the ongoing population shift from east to west will eventually lead to desolated villages and a breakdown of regional communities has lately become a matter of concern reflected by increasing media coverage. In Japan, the widening gap between metropolitan and non-metropolitan regions has lately been recognized as an issue which can even swing the results of national elections in one direction or the other. In this context, the aim of this international workshop is to bring Japanese and German scholars together to foster the exchange of ideas concerning the present state of affected areas and policy options to master the challenges of rural decline. The following questions will be addressed:

• Which regional socio-economic disparities are relevant in Japan and Germany?


• Which processes and mechanisms are currently at work in the rural areas and how should their future prospects be assessed?
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  Which implications do national policies have for the actors in rural areas?

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  Do conventional top-down concepts for regional planning still make sense?
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  Can bottom-up concepts and regional governance approaches be a solution?

These questions will be discussed in four thematic sections consisting of two talks focusing on Japan and Germany, respectively. Our approach is to delve into empirical issues which have relevance for economic geography, political science, and planning and will become increasingly important as demographic ageing and shrinkage are gaining momentum.