During the twentieth century, Japan was transformed from a poor, primarily rural country into one of the world's largest industrial powers and most highly urbanised countries. Interestingly, while Japanese governments and planners borrowed carefully from the planning ideas and methods of many other countries, Japanese urban planning, urban governance and cities developed very differently from those of other developed countries. Japan's distinctive patterns of urbanisation are partly a product of the highly developed urban system, urban traditions and material culture of the pre-modern period, which remained influential until well after the Pacific War. A second key influence has been the dominance of central government in urban affairs, and its consistent prioritisation of economic growth over the public welfare or urban quality of life. André Sorensen examines Japan's urban trajectory from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, paying particular attention to the weak development of Japanese civil society, local governments, and land development and planning regulations.

Osaka City and Osaka Prefecture introduced several large-scale business site and technopole development projects in the 1980s and 1990s that appeared to be failures. This development was designed by the politico-administrative establishment of the Osaka area in order to claim their share of anticipated global economic growth. The case of Osaka suggests that business site developments need to be built on premises that match the requirements of a global knowledge economy. In the 2000s, Osaka started to create a more balanced strategy and a new vision, in which Osaka as a knowledge-intensive lifestyle city is the centre of interaction of the Kansai region.

A Short History of Transport in Japan from Ancient Times to the Present is a unique study: the first by a Western scholar to place the long-term development of Japanese infrastructure alongside an analysis of its evolving political economy. Drawing from New Institutional Economics, Black offers a historically informed critique of contemporary planning using the example of Japan’s historical institutions, their particular biases, and the power they have exerted over national and local transport, to identify how reformed institutional arrangements might develop more sustainable and equitable transport services. With chapters addressing each major form of transport, Black examines the predominant role of institutions and individuals – from seventeenth-century shoguns to post-war planners – in transforming Japan’s maritime infrastructure, its roads and waterways, and its adoption of rail and air transport. Using a multidisciplinary, comparative, and chronological approach, the book consults a range of technical, cultural, and political sources to tease out these interactions between society and technology. This spirited new contribution to transport studies will attract readers interested in institutional power, the history of transport, and the development of future infrastructure, as well as those with a general interest in Japan.