UTokyoIPL-CUTI Special Seminar

1) Time and day : 11:30-12:30, 17th February (Monday), 2025

2) Place : Online Seminar Room. Click here to register

3) Presentation

– Presenter : Dr. Kojiro Sho (The University of Tokyo)

– Title : Shrinking Cities and Spatial Inequality in East Asian Metropolitans

– Abstract : Addressing the challenges of shrinking cities globally remains complex, with underlying causes still requiring in-depth exploration. As the first East Asian country to undergo urbanization, Japan is characterized by both population decline and the intensifying regional disparities driven by Tokyo’s Unipolar Concentration. Despite governmental initiatives aimed at decentralizing metropolitan growth and revitalizing declining regions, these trend–mirroring patterns observed in other East Asian nations such as South Korea and China–continues unabated. East Asia provides a unique setting for studying urbanization and population dynamics, as these countries experience rapid urban life cycles with minimal immigration influence compared to Western nations. This lecture first uncovers a critical relationship between population decline and geographic structure, revealing how remote, non-metropolitan areas are increasingly excluded from the later stages of the city life cycle. Second, this lecture introduces the effects of high-speed railways (HSRs) on gentrification in Japan from 2000 to 2019, using indicators including land prices and income levels. Using the market access index and instrumental variable strategy, a causal relationship between HSR expansion and gentrification is established for outlining the spatial inequality caused by HSR during the past decades.

4) Short bio of presenter

Kojiro Sho is an Associate Professor in the International Development & Regional Planning Unit, Department of Urban Engineering, School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo, where he completed his PhD in 2017. Dr. Sho’s research interests lie in urban land use analysis and gentrification issues. After graduation, he has been working as a Lecturer at the Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka City University since 2017 (as Associate Professor since 2020), Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Kyushu University since 2021, and the University of Tokyo since April 2024. Please find more information from his researchmap as follows: https://researchmap.jp/7000023007

5) Charge : free

6) Language : English

7) Participation : Please contact Ms Tomoko Samukawa (samukawa@ip.civil.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp) for joining this seminar, but you can join the seminar even without pre-registration.

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