Miyuki Hiraoka

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Due to serious population decline and, in 2014, the Japanese Government announced that more than 800 villages and towns could disappear by 2040. This situation needs to be taken more seriously, given the fact that in 30 years the overall population will have declined by 20%. So the problem is that People are losing local communities and becoming mono-cultural.

Now, there is a tech trend for future communities, called “Virtual States”. Following trends such as the metaverse and DAOs, virtual state-like communities have emerged digitally, where people have two citizenships. So people will belong to other countries regardless of where they physically live now.

What if we have a “Virtual Village” for disappearing communities so that people can practise their cultures?

My project aims to explore how we design “Virtual Village” and democratically document or “practice” cultures of disappearing communities based on values, rather than save them as history.

Cultures are constantly changing, not a screenshot of one point in time. Hence, I create communities that virtually belong to the disappearing villages, transfer the community values to them, and practice cultures in virtual villages even after the real communities disappear. 

Through interviews, four key elements in building virtual villages have been identified: “sense of belonging”, “Community”, “Culture”, and “Decision Making”. Based on that, I have designed virtual villages with 5 steps.