Spatial planning to face urban sprawl. Evidences from Japan

The political and technical practices aimed at the arrangement of space play a key role in every society. Any social and economic activity needs space to unfold and through the arrangement of space can be promoted or addressed. For this reason, the origin of the processes of territorial governance and spatial planning is lost in the mists of time, with their contemporary characters that have taken form with the establishment of the modern state. As a consequence, any country in the world includes territorial governance and spatial planning between its fundamental functions and the analysis and comparison of how such activity evolved in different countries constitute a very interesting research field. Such a field had developed increasingly in the last century, following the aim to improve life’s quality and environmental conditions of places for human well-being. The proposed research thesis locates itself within the abovementioned field, aiming at exploring the links between the variety of states and social models and the institution of specific systems of territorial governance and spatial planning. In particular, it focuses on Japan and aims at addressing the relevance of territorial governance and spatial planning in that context especially in relation to the urban sprawl issue.