A Future Outlook of Narratives for the Built Environment in Japan

Abstract

The evolution of long-term sustainable societies is closely connected to the transformation of the physical built environment in which those societies operate. In this paper, we present a comprehensive set of narratives for the built environment in Japan, consistent with the shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) framework, to assess the future evolution of the adaptation and mitigation challenges. We focus on the linkage between sustainability factors and human living environments including urban form, buildings, and basic infrastructures. We introduce a new, sixth narrative to the SSPs, an alternative interpretation of SSP1. Whereas the original SSP1 assumes high societal and environmental sustainability combined with relatively high economic growth, the SSP1 variant does not highly rely on economic growth and is oriented towards a lower and more locally oriented consumption lifestyle. Nature-based solutions are integrated and examined in the new SSP1 narrative, which is aligned with the adaptation to the digital era with freedom of location. Recent global crises such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic may accelerate the transformation of societies. Therefore, this study attempts to imply the benefits and trade-offs of alternative pathways for the built environment.

Cultural Tradition as a Local Context for Sustainable of Urban Identity in Gianyar City Case Study

“…Urbanization resulted in the increasing diversity of urban communities and changes in the built environment and associated memories (Kamei et al, 2021). On this side, heritage contributes to the sustainability of a society or social system to achieve prosperity by concentrating on cultural characteristics and social interactions (Elshater, 2015).…”