Regenerating Urban Areas in Japanese Cities With a Nod to Sustainability

This editorial introduces the thematic issue on Sustainable Urban Regeneration in Japan. It presents our original motivations, the gaps we attempted to fill with the call for contributions, our take on sustainable urban regeneration, and the main highlights of the published articles. Our takeaways are that there are relatively distinct dynamics in large and regional cities throughout the country, with urban regeneration initiatives encapsulating multiple intensities, resources, extensions, stakeholders, collaborative and challenging practices, results, and legacies. Readers are encouraged to consider each individual contribution in relation to the thematic issue’s main rationale and scholarly goals. Finally, we suggest that readers place themselves in the shoes of the contributing authors to fully attempt to understand their positionalities, interpretations, methodologies, research processes, findings, limitations, and key takeaways.