Posts Tagged ‘Japan’
Stitching up Northeast Asia: Blast from the Past
I’m reading “The Making of Northeast Asia” by Calder and Ye on the rapid stitching together of Northeast Asia into an organisational bloc to be reckoned with.
I saw an intriguing map of a network of high speed rails tying up the region together, titled the Big Loop, proposed in the early 2000s by Mr Shioya. Fast forward a decade later and we see China’s high speed rail system going their own way and also stitching up the region along the way too.
The comparison with past policy plans, and actual implementation on the ground years later, is always fascinating.
East Asia’s online kingdoms
We just returned from a fruitful trip to Korea, lots that we’ve learnt there, but up front sticking in my mind are East Asia’s online hermit kingdoms. These are the QQs, Navers, Mixis etc that have shown new ways or organising, socialising and monetising networks that facebook, myspace etc have not. We are thinking of doing some animation to highlight these kingdoms, but for now, there’s a very useful slideshare below from Benjamin Joffe of pluseightstar, who was also at LIFT Asia presenting on a similar topic.
Shrinking Nippon
Shrinking Nippon: Strategies For A Future Japan
Japan is facing a lot of problems when it comes to town planning: a decreasing population that will soon be overaged, shrinking towns in the countryside, and a fading government budget that is tinted by last year’s pension scandal. We already introduced you to the Shrinking Cities exhibition that toured Tokyo and dealt with vanishing populations. One of the people working on that was Hidetoshi Ohno, professor at the University of Tokyo. With his Fiber City project from 2005 he had developed strategies for a future Japan. Now, he gives an update with his Shrinking Nippon concept compilation, published by Kajima Institute Publishing. Read on more by Pingmag here.
Japan is already facing a lot of problems related to a decreasing population, not least which is town planning. How do you design an urban space for vanishing populations?
