Reimagining Shrinking Communities: Rural Agency and Sustainability in Japan’s SDGs Future Cities

Date
Monday 20 April 2026

Time
6.45pm

Venue
The Swedenborg Society
20-21 Bloomsbury Way (Hall entrance on Barter St)
London WC1A 2TH
[Map]

Booking Details
Free- Booking essential

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Japan’s shrinking and ageing communities are often portrayed as symbols of decline, yet they are also spaces of experimentation, resilience, and reinvention. Drawing on research in three municipalities—Shimokawa, Suzu, and Kamikatsu—this talk explores how rural communities designated as SDGs Future Cities are using global sustainability ideas to craft new narratives of revitalisation. Rather than accepting demographic change through the lens of inevitable decline, local actors are adapting sustainability to negotiate identity and community life and to open new ways to shape their path forward. Their initiatives reveal both creativity and complexity: projects blend familiar growth-oriented strategies with emerging post-growth visions that imagine how Japan's rural communities might thrive with a smaller population.

Through examples from these towns, this talk will explore what sustainable revitalisation might look like in practice, where innovation meets limitation, and the insights these rural experiments offer into building meaningful futures beyond urban centres.

Dr Marco Reggiani is a Research Fellow at the University of Strathclyde whose work spans urban studies, sustainability, and inclusion in STEM research environments. His research on shrinking cities and rural revitalisation in Japan brings together ethnography, policy analysis, and fieldwork, with a particular focus on how communities adapt to population decline and imagine sustainable futures. He previously held a Japan Foundation Short‑Term Fellowship to investigate the impacts of high-speed rail on peripheral regions in northern Japan. He is an active writer and public speaker, contributing to academic, policy, and community conversations on sustainability, inclusion, and urban change. 

If you have any questions, please call The Japan Society office on 020 3075 1996 or email events@japansociety.org.uk.

Image: Kamikatsu by Yuki Shimazu (CC BY-SA 2.0). 

Supported by the Toshiba International Foundation (TIFO)

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