Regional Revitalization 2.0

Shigeru Ishiba Cabinet fixed its basic concept for encouraging local community, which was titled “Regional Revitalization 2.0.” Given a tendency of serious decline of new birth rate in Japan, Ishiba Cabinet encourages decentralization to promote demographic balance between big cities and local regions. The Cabinet focuses on increasing population of local communities, not based on residents but on flow of the people. 

Ishiba was in charge of this issue, Regional Revitalization 1.0, as a Minister of Shinzo Abe Cabinet in 2014. As a lawmaker elected from a local district in Tottori, Ishiba made efforts to improve towns, people and jobs, which included new legislation for moving some office of national government to regions or for appropriating national budget for benefits to the local governments. However, the measures did not lead Japan to a trend of decentralization.

 

The basic concept found the greatest reason for centralization to Tokyo to be moves of young agers and women from local cities to Tokyo. Regional Revitalization 1.0 mostly ignored that, leaving creation of jobs for young agers behind. Focusing on reduction of people outgoing too much, the local communities unconsciously competed each other to taking population from other local communities.

 

As the prime minister, Ishiba upholds a concept of “new and pleasant Japan,” the concept with which he reviews his previous concept a decade ago. “Each young ager who are responsible for the future of local cities can contribute to building up a unique local community through loving their hometown, thinking about their future with their own idea and taking action for their goals.

 

To sustainable relationship between big cities and local towns, the basic concept encourages increase of “related population,” a concept which means the number of people who are continuously connected to a specific local community, even if they are not living there. The basic concept set a target to create 10 million related population all over Japan in 2035.

 

To visualize related population, the government introduces “Hometown Residents Registration System," in which everyone can register as human resource of local town to participate in development of the community. To encourage the connection, the government of Japan is going to support development of infrastructure, including digital networking or housing.

 

Former administration led by Fumio Kishida raised “Digital Garden City Nation,” which projected to connect cities with digital network. However, Kishida’s effort did not change the trend of centralization to Tokyo and low birth rate in local area. Ishiba’s new concept has no big change from Kishida’s vision. It is still unsure Ishiba’s action will lead to decentralization and uprising of the birth rate.

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