The development story of Toyama

This report provides a glimpse into the future through the development story of Toyama City. The goal of this report is to take a deep dive into the local context in Toyama, Japan, and narrate how the mid-sized regional city with less than 500,000 inhabitants has acknowledged and acted on early signs of prospective global challenges: declining population and aging. The case aims to provide specific knowledge catered for urban practitioners in cities of similar size and particularly those cities that may expect dramatic demographic changes in the next decades.
More people live in cities now than at any other point in history, and this trend is creating increasing imbalance between rural and urban populations. By 2030, approximately 60 percent of the world’s population will live in urban areas. Although the trend of urban migration is expected to continue in the foreseeable future, some cities have started to experience population decline in recent years.
Worldwide, from 2000 to 2018, of 1,146 cities with less than 500,000 inhabitants, 52 cities have experienced population decline since 2000. ¹ Although some of this demographic change was triggered by natural disasters, much of the population stagnation has occurred as a result of lower fertility rates.
Moreover, the world population is aging fast. For the first time in history, people ages 65 years and over
worldwide outnumber children under 5. By mid-century, there will be more than twice as many older people than young children.
Particularly in cities, this change results from increasing longevity and declining birthrates. In the case of
Toyama, this trend is coupled with migration to larger cities because of the lack of higher education and
employment opportunities, and many other regional cities in Japan have been facing the same situation. The United Nations’ World Cities report predicts that similar trends will be seen in some other countries, regions, and districts in Eastern and Central Europe, Eastern Asia, and some selected neighborhoods in Southeast Asia and Latin America.
So, how can cities be designed to be more livable, age-ready, and more attractive? Does the solution lie in changing fiscal incentives? Is it in rethinking urban service delivery and housing? There is no simple answer, but in Toyama’s case, it was clear that a new approach to urban interventions was needed. The following section describes six sets of approaches and outcomes taken by Toyama City that will be detailed in this report.

source :

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/4c3f587b-5339-597c-a8ea-a8a2b4c335b2