도쿄에 빈집이 나타난다고?

 

본격적으로 이코노미스트 기사를 소개하기 전에

서울에도 이런 일이 나타날까? 하는 궁금증을 가지셨다면

제 대답은

 

"장난치냐? " 입니다

 

 

Japanese demography

Desperately seeking young people

There aren’t many, and cities are growing desperate

 

아래에 나오는 The Economist 기사의 배경이 되는 타마입니다.
도쿄에서 그리 멀지 않은 지역입니다.
(타마-도쿄 23km / 서울 광화문-안양 19.6km)

 

 

 

 

기사 중반부터 나오는 Tama에서 강 상류에 위치한 '오쿠타마'입니다.
(오쿠타마-도쿄 56km / 서울-오산 47km)

 

 

 

'도쿄'도(Greater Tokyo Area)의 범위입니다.
이 서쪽 가장자리에 '오쿠타마'가 위치합니다.

 

그림 출처 : World Cities And Nation States (2017년) WILEY Blackwell출판

 

 

 

 

이 지도는 구글링하다 주워왔는데 출처가 기억이 안나네요 ㅠ.ㅠ

 

 

 

 

'Tokyo'하고 'Greater Tokyo Area'를 구분하지 않고 말하면 
<노령화로 도쿄에 빈집이 나타났어요>라는 기사에서 많이 헷갈릴 수도 있어요

 

 

 

 

MIEKO TERADA moved to Tama in 1976, at about the same time as everyone else there. Back then, the fast-growing city in Tokyo’s suburban fringe was busy with young married couples and children. These days, however, the strip of shops where Ms Terada runs a café is deathly quiet, her clientele elderly. The people of Tama and their apartments are all growing old and decrepit at the same time, she says.

 

In the mid-1990s Japan had a smaller proportion of over-65s than Britain or Germany. Thanks to an ultra-low birth rate, admirable longevity and a stingy immigration policy, it is now by far the oldest country in the OECD. And senescence is spreading to new areas. Many rural Japanese villages have been old for years, because young people have left them for cities. Now the suburbs are greying, too.

 

(교통의 발달은 위성도시로의 교외화 현상도 가속화 하지만, 
고령화 시대에는 반대로 모(母)도시로 빨려 들어가는 고속 빨대의 역할을 수행하게 됩니다.
고령화로 가장 힘들어하는 지역이 도쿄 주변의 suburbs들입니다.)

 

 

실제로, 노령화가 진행될수록
도쿄, 오사카, 나고야 3대 도시권이 전체 일본 인구에서 차지하는 비중은 날로 커지고 있습니다.

 

 

<관련포스트>
일본의 공업지역과 인구 분포의 불균등

 

 

Between 2010 and 2040 the number of people aged 65 or over in metropolitan Tokyo, of which Tama is part, is expected to rise from 2.7m to 4.1m, at which point one-third of Tokyo residents will be old. In Tama, ageing will be even swifter. The number of children has already dropped sharply: its city hall occupies a former school. Statisticians think the share of people over 65 in Tama will rise from 21% to 38% in the three decades to 2040. The number of over-75s will more than double. 

 

The city’s inhabitants have already been spooked by an increasing number of confused old people wandering around. By 2025, officials in Tama predict, almost one in four elderly residents will be bedridden and one in seven will suffer from dementia. And the city is hardly ideal for old people. It is built on steep hills, and the five-storey apartment blocks where many of the residents live do not have lifts.

(한국의 분당이나 일산하고 다른 점이 이것이군요.
여기는, 가파른 언덕에 엘리베이터도 없는 5층짜리 아파트가 주를 이루니
노인들에겐 지옥으로 변할 수 밖에 없는 형편이였네요)

 

 

For Tama, though, the most worrying effects of ageing are fiscal. Two-thirds of the city’s budget goes on social welfare, which old people require lots of. They do not contribute much to the city’s coffers in return. Although Japan’s central government redistributes money between municipalities, much of what local governments spend comes from local residency taxes, which fall only lightly on pensioners. In short, says Shigeo Ito, the head of community health in Tama, it pays for a place to avoid growing too old.

 

 

 

Tama’s enticements

 

So, as well as providing more in-home care and laying on aerobics classes to keep people fit enough to climb all those stairs, Tama is once again trying to lure young families. With a developer, Brillia, it has already razed 23 five-storey apartment blocks and put up seven towers in their place. The number of flats in the redeveloped area has almost doubled, and many are larger than before. That has attracted new residents: although the poky 40-square-metre apartments in the old blocks were sufficient for the post-war generation, modern Japanese families demand more space. Tama’s authorities intend to transform other districts in a similar way.

 

This is smart policy, but there is a problem with it. The number of 20- to 29-year-olds in Japan has crashed from 18.3m to 12.8m since 2000, according to the World Bank. By 2040 there might be only 10.5m of them. Cities like Tama are therefore playing not a zero-sum game but a negative-sum game, frantically chasing an ever-diminishing number of young adults and children. And some of their rivals have extremely sharp elbows.

도쿄 주변의 도시들 사이들 관계가 
젊은이들 유치 경쟁으로 만인에 대한 만인의 투쟁상태가 되는구나

 

 

Follow the Tama river upstream, into the mountains, and you eventually reach a tiny town called "Okutama". What Tama is trying to avoid has already happened there. Okutama’s population peaked in the 1950s, as construction workers flocked to the town to build a large reservoir that supplies water to Tokyo in emergencies. It has grown smaller and older ever since.

 

Today 47% of people in the Okutama administrative area—the town and surrounding villages—are 65 or older, and 26% are at least 75. Children have become so scarce that the large primary school is only about one-quarter full. Residents in their 70s outnumber children under ten by more than five to one (see chart).

 

 

And Okutama’s residents are as stubborn as they are long-lived. Some of its outlying villages have become so minuscule that providing them with services is difficult, says Hiroki Morita, head of the planning and finance department. It would be better for their residents, and certainly better for the local government, if they consolidated into larger villages. But old people refuse to leave their shrunken hamlets even during heavy snowstorms, and are unlikely to move permanently just to make a bureaucrat’s life easier. The internet and home delivery help them cling on, points out Mr Morita.

 

Okutama has tried to promote agriculture: wasabi, a spicy vegetable that is ground up and eaten with sushi, grows well there. It hopes to appeal to families by offering free vaccinations, free school lunches and free transport. None of that has staved off ageing and decline. So now it is touting free housing. Mr Morita estimates that the town has about 450 empty homes. He wants the owners to give their homes to the town government, which they might do in order to avoid property taxes. The government will then rent the homes to young couples, the more fecund the better. If they stay for 15 years their rent will be refunded.

(도쿄에도 빈집이 나타나고 있다는 기사는 이런 곳을 두고 말하는 것이군요
Greater Tokyo Area 관점으로 보면 여기까지 도쿄에 해당하니까요

위 문단 얘기는 정말 극단적이네요.
과연 우리나라도 저런 일이 일어나게 될까요?)

 

 

Although its setting, amid steep hills, is spectacular, Okutama is not a pretty town. Its houses are neither old enough to be considered beautiful nor modern enough to be comfortable. Some feature post-war wheezes like plastic siding. Still, the prospect of free accommodation some two hours’ journey from central Tokyo might tempt some young families. And in the meantime, Okutama has another plan.

 

A building once occupied by a junior high school, which closed for lack of pupils, is becoming a language college. Jellyfish, an education firm with tentacles in several countries, will use it to teach Japanese to young graduates from East and South-East Asia. It hopes to enroll 120 students, plus staff, which ought to make a notable difference in a district where there are now fewer than 350 people in their 20s. Some of those students might even decide they like the place, and settle down. Whisper it, but this sounds a little like a more liberal immigration policy.

 

 

출처 : The Economist - 2017.01.07 "Japanese demography"- 17page