Sōja

Sōja (総社市, Sōja-shi) is a city located in Okayama Prefecture, Japan.

As of April 30, 2011, the city has an estimated population of 67,357, with 24,623 households and a population density of 317.72 persons per km². The total area is 212.00 km².

History

In the 7th century, Ki Castle was built atop the mountain Kijōyama. Long in ruins, excavation and partial reconstruction began in 1999.

The city was founded on March 31, 1954.

On March 22, 2005, the villages of Yamate and Kiyone (both from Tsukubo District) were merged into Sōja.

Geography

Adjacent municipalities

Sōja is surrounded by the following cities and towns, all within Okayama Prefecture.

Rivers

Mountains

Sister cities

Sōja has been twinned with Chino, Nagano in Japan since 1984.

References

External links

Edward Soja

Edward William Soja (/ˈsoʊdʒə/; 1940–2015) was a self-described "urbanist," a noted postmodern political geographer and urban theorist on the planning faculty at UCLA, where he was Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning, and the London School of Economics. He had a Ph.D. from Syracuse University. His early research focused on planning in Kenya, but Soja came to be known as the world's leading spatial theorist with a distinguished career writing on spatial formations and social justice.

In 2015 he was awarded the Vautrin Lud Prize, the highest honor for a geographer and often called the Nobel Prize in the field of geography.

In addition to his readings of American feminist cultural theorist bell hooks (b. 1952), and French intellectual Michel Foucault (1926–1984), Soja's greatest contribution to spatial theory and the field of cultural geography is his use of the work of French Marxist urban sociologist Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991), author of The Production of Space (1974). Soja has updated Lefebvre's concept of the spatial triad with his own concept of spatial trialectics which includes thirdspace, or spaces that are both real and imagined.