Abstract
Japan Association of Regional and Community Studies (JARCS) set its common issue for 2014 to 2016 as “the Grand Design of national spatial development and regional societies as livingspheres”. In the 40th symposium held in May 2015, we focused on regional areas and the disaster area of Great East Japan Earthquake, to which the topic of “selection and concentration” is most applicable.
The discussion of this symposium has a relation with the definition and evaluation of postcolonial developmentalism nations, and the transition of regional areas of East Asia. In 2014, the Japanese government proposed a national spatial development plan called “Grand Design 2050”. Regional societies as living-spheres of local people, however, have developed in their own way, resisting against this national spatial development plan. It is an unavoidable theme for regional and community studies to grasp the situation and relation of the government plan and the local people’s action, and unravel their historical and social meanings.
