ABSTRACT
This volume examines the changing roles of citizens’ participation in local environmental management and governance in Japan. A variety of processes for citizen engagement in place management spread rapidly throughout Japan during the 1990s, and are widely referred to as ‘machizukuri.’ We use the Japanese term ‘machizukuri’ in this volume, as the word does not translate easily into English. It refers to a diverse range of practices, and has multiple and contested meanings as discussed in several of the chapters collected here. What is not in dispute is that this is a very important phenomenon. Thousands of machizukuri processes have been established nationwide, in an enormous outpouring of local energy into attempts to achieve more bottom-up input into local place management in which local citizens play an active role in environmental improvement and management processes. This in itself is a remarkable phenomenon that should be better understood.
