ABSTRACT

This chapter looks at different attempts which have been made to construct socially ordered places, starting with the physical regeneration of cities and neighborhood and then moving on to consider the move to social and community regeneration which predominated from the 1970s. Regenerating the Shrinking Cities of Japan has been losing population since the beginning of the twenty-first century, largely due to a rapidly declining birth rate. Regeneration policies had the effect of fragmenting responses to problems which were manifest nationally and internationally. The chapter focuses on the imposition of national solutions onto local communities and a concern to devolve responsibility to the local level. Regeneration should include an analysis of factors which are economic, social and related to the built environment. Regeneration has followed the dominant ideas regarding the welfare state as inflexible, out of touch and a creator of dependency cultures. Communities have been co-opted into this regeneration practice and held responsible for its ultimate success or failure.