Shrinking Japan town tries ‘compact city’ model
Yubari, a sleepy former coal-mining town in northern Japan, is taking unprecedented measures to combat its biggest challenge – turning into a ghost town as its population shrinks.
Its success could decide the future for hundreds of other local governments waging the same battle for survival. Since its peak in the ’60s, the population of Yubari has declined by more than 90% to 9 000, as older residents died and young people moved away. Ten years ago, it became Japan’s first municipality to declare bankruptcy.
Yubari embarked on a drastic experiment. City officials are merging schools, slashing government jobs and salaries, halting funds for public swimming pools, toilets and parks, curtailing services, such as bus routes and snow removal, and downgrading the hospital to a clinic.
The most drastic measure has been the forced relocation of hundreds of residents from public housing on the city’s outskirts to blocks of new, low-rise apartments closer to the city centre – building “a compact city”.
By 2040, about half of Japan’s municipalities, or 896 towns and cities, will be on a course to future extinction under a “grey tsunami” as numbers of women of reproductive age drop below levels needed to sustain them, state projections estimate.
More than 20% of residential areas in Japan will become ghost towns by 2050, Japan’s land ministry forecasts. Population data indicate 20% of municipalities experiencing a drop below 5 000 people. The “compact city” solution is being considered as a model for survival by these areas facing depopulation. – Bloomberg