The housing problem in Japan's big cities did not fix itself with a shrinking population (they're growing) but instead with nationalization of land use laws.

  > nationalization of land use laws.

interesting, any good links about that?

The population is not “growing”. They are simply emptying out towns for the large metros.

It doesn’t matter where the urban population increase is coming from in this conversation.

I am unable to reply to a different comment, but this is a good reference to zoning law in Japan: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hzbhGNMp-P7lnp2-VXRjJVjDOAm....

> If the population trends are correct, the housing problem will fix itself.

Only if climate change doesn't reach levels where lots of coastal properties are wrecked by rising seas. IIRC a large fraction of global population live close to the coast.

The housing problem may be fixed but what about the care for the elderly?

Japan said a couple of decades ago "robots". I guess it has to work out, one century or other?