Challenges of Second Cities: Introduction to the Special Articles

This article aims to explain the purpose and research context of the special issues covered in the ‘Challenges of Second Cities’. In addition, we review the discussion of the symposium held at the 36th Japan Association for Urban Sociology Annual Meeting in September 2018 and further explore some research agendas regarding urban sociological research on Japanese second cities. While most global city researchers have focused their analysis on global first-ranked cities, e.g. New York, London, Paris and Tokyo, but, recently, some researchers have begun re-aligning their academic interests towards second-rank cities in the global urban hierarchy and subsequently tracing the peculiar historical developmental paths of urban growth and associated policy challenges. Our special articles consider the growth strategies and policy challenges facing such second cities in Japan, namely, Osaka and Nagoya, and a leading example of an European second city, Barcelona. Through our discussions of the special issues, we introduce a new frontier of urban sociological research on large Japanese cities.