45
© The Author(s) 2020
O. Saito et al. (eds.), Managing Socio-ecological Production Landscapes and
Seascapes for Sustainable Communities in Asia, Science for Sustainable
Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1133-2_4
Chapter 4
The Use of Backcasting to Promote Urban
Transformation to Sustainability: The Case
of Toyama City, Japan
Kazumasu Aoki, Yusuke Kishita, Hidenori Nakamura, and Takuma Masuda
Abstract Envisioning urban sustainability demands to embrace divergent values of
various stakeholders. Implementation of policies realizing city’s future visions needs
support from a wide range of general public. Hence, merits of participatory approach
to backcasting scenario-making have been noted. Although experimenting such
approach should be more encouraged, it remains to be seen whether lay citizens can
generate their scenarios with required level of rationale and soundness. This chapter
addresses this important, but yet unexplored concern by taking two potentially contrasting perspectives. One is “divergence” found in processes where citizens express
their pluralistic interests and preferences in an unconstrained manner. The other is
“convergence” found in where such a diversified plurality is circumscribed and composed to engender in outcomes some form of converged context. A trade-off relationship may arise between these two and the chapter seeks if any balance can be
upheld. To explore such question, a participatory workshop was held in Toyama city,
Japan where a handful numbers of citizens envisioned in two separate groups their
desirable future via backcasting city’s sustainable features. In analyses, outcomes of
both groups’ scenarios were compared and also index of consistency-based text
structures endogenous to the scenarios was quantitatively gauged by computational
simulation technique. Findings suggest that while a broad spectrum of socioecoK. Aoki (*)
University of Toyama, Toyama, Japan
e-mail: kzaoki@eco.u-toyama.ac.jp
Y. Kishita
The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
H. Nakamura
Toyama Prefectural University, Toyama, Japan
T. Masuda
MS&AD Systems Company, Tokyo, Japan
This work was performed when the fourth author used to be a bachelor student at the University of
Tokyo.
© The Author(s) 2020
O. Saito et al. (eds.), Managing Socio-ecological Production Landscapes and
Seascapes for Sustainable Communities in Asia, Science for Sustainable
Societies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1133-2_4
Chapter 4
The Use of Backcasting to Promote Urban
Transformation to Sustainability: The Case
of Toyama City, Japan
Kazumasu Aoki, Yusuke Kishita, Hidenori Nakamura, and Takuma Masuda
Abstract Envisioning urban sustainability demands to embrace divergent values of
various stakeholders. Implementation of policies realizing city’s future visions needs
support from a wide range of general public. Hence, merits of participatory approach
to backcasting scenario-making have been noted. Although experimenting such
approach should be more encouraged, it remains to be seen whether lay citizens can
generate their scenarios with required level of rationale and soundness. This chapter
addresses this important, but yet unexplored concern by taking two potentially contrasting perspectives. One is “divergence” found in processes where citizens express
their pluralistic interests and preferences in an unconstrained manner. The other is
“convergence” found in where such a diversified plurality is circumscribed and composed to engender in outcomes some form of converged context. A trade-off relationship may arise between these two and the chapter seeks if any balance can be
upheld. To explore such question, a participatory workshop was held in Toyama city,
Japan where a handful numbers of citizens envisioned in two separate groups their
desirable future via backcasting city’s sustainable features. In analyses, outcomes of
both groups’ scenarios were compared and also index of consistency-based text
structures endogenous to the scenarios was quantitatively gauged by computational
simulation technique. Findings suggest that while a broad spectrum of socioecoK. Aoki (*)
University of Toyama, Toyama, Japan
e-mail: kzaoki@eco.u-toyama.ac.jp
Y. Kishita
The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
H. Nakamura
Toyama Prefectural University, Toyama, Japan
T. Masuda
MS&AD Systems Company, Tokyo, Japan
This work was performed when the fourth author used to be a bachelor student at the University of
Tokyo.