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Global environmental change, the depletion of natural resources, and unacceptable levels of pollution, among other anthropogenic impacts on the planet and its ecosystems, demand a radical shift in the way humankind develops. Global agreements like the "2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development" or the "Paris Agreement on Climate Change" seek to promote sustainable development and its integration in policymaking. Against this backdrop, the Government of Japan in its Fifth Basic Environment Plan of 2018 proposed the concept of the Circulating and Ecological Sphere (CES) to guide sustainable transitions in light of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). The CES provides a framework for a new paradigm in sustainable development bringing together existing approaches, namely, rural-urban linkages, ecosystem-based solutions, decarbonisation, and resource circulation. Still in an embryonic stage, some regional and local authorities in Japan have started to experiment with ways to apply this concept on the ground. Drawing on a systematic literature review on the different components covered by the CES, along with analysis of a case study in Suzu, Japan, this paper explores how this new concept can contribute to achieve a sustainable future.

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As more countries witness depopulation, the expansion of High-Speed Rail (HSR) to reach shrinking cities in peripheral regions is renewing the debate on the effects of this infrastructure. This is the case in Japan, a country that continues to extend its highly developed HSR network hoping to curb regional decline. This paper investigates whether HSR had a positive effect on the shrinking trajectories of connected medium and small-sized cities in peripheral regions by examining the impact of extending the Shinkansen network on five municipalities in the prefectures of Iwate and Aomori, northern Japan. Although depopulation decelerated in some of the case studies, the findings highlight that HSR did not reverse shrinkage and benefits are mainly found in increased accessibility, albeit unevenly distributed. This suggests that, rather than uniformly uplifting socio-economic outlooks, the Shinkansen contributed to reshaping the trajectories of the connected cities and reproduced core-periphery dynamics at the regional level.