ABSTRACT
Significant effect can be expected to limit the sort of counterurbanization that is unlinked to existing major centres. Japan’s highly urbanized population is concentrated in three major agglomerations, Tokyo–Yokohama, Osaka–Kobe–Kyoto and Nagoya. Examining data up to 1985, N.O. Tsuya and T. Kuroda reported slowing natural population increase in Japan’s metropolitan sector and slowing net non-metro-to-metro net migration. Settlement dispersion is thought to be largely ‘unplanned’ and ‘chaotic’, wasteful of land, energy and other resources, a source of road congestion and air quality problems and inner-city unemployment and poverty. The comparison of US–Canada settlement trends is interesting because cultural differences are presumably less pronounced than policy differences. Direct evidence for counterurbanization outside the US is harder to find.
