BECOMING A HOMETOWN DESIGNER : Designing a Living for Isumi City, Chiba Prefecture

概要

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"Hometown designer", as a profession, let alone as a terminology, has yet to folly bloom and become recognized in Japan. The academic program offered by Chiba University in Isumi City, Chiba Prefecture, intends to boost this recognition and its stature. The program offers an opportunity for students to work closely with residents and to develop their leadership skills, as well as improve their design and implementation capacities. Rhetorically connoting a medical prescription written by a home doctor to treat an illness, the academic program on "designing a living" reflects a careful diagnosis of the drastic changes to the cultural, social, environmental, and economic conditions particular to a region or town and the solutions thereof. With this acting as a rubric or new perception of a hometown designer's role, this paper analyzes the basic approaches that a hometown designer should apply and the key factors that assure sustainable regional promotion. Specifically, these refer to the academic program's features on identifying indigenous resources (treasures), identifying and screening nonproblem-solving-based ideas, and formulating visions. The concept of Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) and the Flowering of the Total Person (Jinshin-no-hana) constitute the basic guiding principles of the work of a hometown designer.
2010-01-31