AN ECONOMIC POLICY HYPOTHESIS OF METROPOLITAN GROWTH CYCLES: A Reflection on the Recent Rejuvenation of Tokyo*
Rejecting the simplistic lifeâ€ cycle hypothesis of cities put forth by Klassen and Paelinck, this paper advances a new hypothesis for the cyclical movements of urban growth that have taken place on a worldâ€ wide scale. The recent rejuvenation of major industrialized cities is largely attributed to the shift in the government's economic policies toward a smaller government, supported by the existence of economies of scale in large cities. The paper closely examines Tokyo's recent rejuvenation and shows how the government's conservative economic policies of the 1980's helped reverse the declining trend of the previous decade.
ON THE FLUCTUATION OF LAND PRICES IN POSTWAR JAPAN
After the war Japan has experienced frequent land price inflations since the beginning of the 1960s, which saw the first peak of land price hike. Since then, issues on land prices and policy have actively been debated, but such discussion has not reached real solution up to now. This is because no effective land policy has been established after all. This also shows how difficult land problem in Japan is. To find out the way to solve land problem, it is necessary to clarify how and why the rises in land prices have occurred. First of all, in this paper, we would like to start to divide the process of land price movements into five periods and then finding the characteristics of each period. Postwar land prices have moved in close connections with the changes of speed of economic growth, trend of urbanization and regional development, fluctuations in financial market, etc. Then, postwar period can roughly be divided as follows, concerning the land price movements : Period 1 : 19451955 (Showa 20s) Period li : 19551966 (Showa 30s) Periodi : 19661975 (Showa 40s) PeriodIV: 1975-1983 (Showa 50-58) Period V : 19831993 (Showa 58-Heisei 5?)
The Growth and Management of the Japanese Urban System
Japanese as relatively modern, active, foreign, hypocritical (yet ethical), and intellectual. Buddhism, on the other hand, was found to be pietistic, friendly, ethical, emotional, and a religion of the common people. Unfortunately, the editorial committee relied on three separate reports rather than a single, unified analysis of the data, resulting in overlapping and a rather haphazard appearance. Some points of interpretation seem to be theologically inspired, such as the equation of "low religious intensity" with "latent faith." Also, the data do not seem to bear out the interpretation that a "new, fundamentally religious concern is transfiguring Japanese youth" (p. 147). Jan Swyngedouw says it for the reviewer when he writes: "The survey here described does not reveal spectacular new findings, nor does it shatter long-established opinions about the image Christianity has in this country" (p. 125). As for statistical findings on religious opinion in Japan in general, more reliable (and sophisticated) is the Survey of the National Character of the Japanese published every five years by the Institute of Statistics and Mathematics of the Ministry of Education and the various surveys conducted periodically by the mass media (e.g., Gendai Nihonjin no Ishiki Kozo, NHK Books, no. 344, 1979).