Everyone moving to Kamiyama Town? Discounted renovations of old houses let tech creatives settle in
Text / Hsieh Chih-cheng (Chairman, Rural Development Foundation)
Kamiyama Town is a remote rural settlement located at roughly the central position of Tokushima Prefecture. Once ignored by all, today, with the promotion of Japan's local revitalization policy, this quiet remote settlement attracts the attention of migrants, becoming the hope for the revitalization of many declining rural areas in Japan, earning recognition from Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications "Local Revitalization Award," and becoming a classic demonstration case of local revitalization vigorously promoted throughout Japan.
Last Friday (November 26), arranged by Nomura Research Institute Taiwan Consulting, a group went to Zuozhen, Tainan, and met with Mr. Shinya Oonami, director of Green Valley, a local nonprofit public-interest organization from Kamiyama Town, Japan, to learn from his experience promoting migration to Kamiyama Town in Tokushima Prefecture.
After 30 years of effort, Kamiyama Town started with culture and the arts, then moved on to attracting entrepreneurs to relocate, renovating local old houses and vacant homes to provide designers with space to work and live, encouraging tech companies to set up remote offices here, inviting "high-value work" in, creating new "services," and then bringing in cash flow through tourism and other means, realizing economic circulation within the region and achieving the goal of autonomous development, which is very much worth Taiwan's reference.
(To deeply grasp rural development and local revitalization within Taiwan's real context, "Upstream and Downstream" cooperates with the "Rural Development Foundation" on the "Rural Development Special Topic," using a series of articles to explore Taiwan's current situation and Japan's policy trends. To read the full series of articles, please click here)