1st Edition

Lifestyle and Nature Integrating Nature Technology to Sustainable Lifestyles

442 Pages 17 Color & 134 B/W Illustrations
by Jenny Stanford Publishing

442 Pages 17 Color & 134 B/W Illustrations
by Jenny Stanford Publishing

Environmental constraints are becoming increasingly severe, and now more than ever it is time that we confront head-on the change from an "underground resources" type of civilization to one with a new way of life and technology that embraces a sense of nature. To do so, we need to understand the process of the civilization change. We must change our way of thinking to backcasting in order to... Read more

Chapter 1 Environmental Degradation and the Need to Change Our Lifestyles

Chapter 2 Nature Technology Creation System

Chapter 3 How Japan Found a Way of Life Producing Spiritual Affluence from Limited Resources

Chapter 4 Lifestyle Design by Backcasting

Chapter 5 Extracting Technologies from Future Lifestyles

Chapter 6 Matching Lifestyle to Technology

Chapter 7 Bio-TRIZ

Chapter 8 Creating a Fountain of Future Lifestyle Ideas: Project Implementation

Chapter 9 Creating Local Flavor and Passing It Down

Chapter 10 Developing Needs-Oriented Technologies with Bio-TRIZ

Chapter 11 Trends and Characteristics of Biomimetic Technology: Towards Social Implementation

Chapter 12 Nature Technology as a Contributor to Sustainable Social Innovation

Biography

Ryuzo Furukawa is a professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies, Tokyo City University. He received a BS in 1996 and an MS in 1998 from the University of Tokyo. From 1998 to 2005, he served as a researcher in the Mitsubishi Research Institute, Inc., during which time he got interested in innovation research. He received a PhD in innovation research from the Department of Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Tokyo, in 2005. From then on, he has been at the Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Tohoku University, and developing new methodologies such as lifestyle design by backcasting, nature technology, lifestyle analysis by using ontology engineering, and solution creation methods. He has interviewed more than 500 90-year-old people to research old lifestyles and find sustainable ones and is dedicated to finding a framework of lifestyle innovation that makes possible a sustainable society living in harmony with nature. He is also the founder of "Mirai no Kurashi Sozo Juku," an association for learning about social innovation. It is running several projects with the local government (Toyooka City, Akita City, Kitakami City, Yuzawa City, Shima City, Okinoerabu Island, Suginami-ku in Tokyo, etc.) and companies. Prof. Furukawa has authored or coauthored more than 48 academic papers and 17 books and won 9 awards.