Terminal care of villages

Japan’s population is declining and experts believe that the loss of some declining villages will have a nationwide impact. To tackle this, new planning theories are crucial. At the Department of Architecture, National Institute of Technology, Oyama College, Associate Professor Heewon Choi has been exploring the concept of ‘terminal care of villages’. He believes it is important for planners from government agencies to work with the local community to make decisions about the future of such villages and that this will also help other countries experiencing population-related challenges. Choi believes that end of life care is something that urban entities should receive and that related decisions should be made by the local community from the region in question rather than by experts, based on data. Choi is seeking to define the need for terminal care of villages and will achieve this by analysing objective data and the structure of the decision-makers in village planning. The data collected by Choi and the team includes geographic information system (GIS) data, population data and spatial-data acquired through questionnaires, interviews and workshops. Once the large bank of data was collated across numerous locations, the researchers were able to perform statistical analyses. Choi has encountered challenges in the form of disseminating the idea of ‘terminal care of villages’ among Government officials and fellow researchers who have questioned the ways in which Choi’s policy is novel. But where existing policies aim to provide livelihood support for residents and boost newcomer numbers, Choi’s concept focuses on supporting struggling villages with a view to eventual closure of the settlement.