Aiming at the Regional City

8/4/2019 Aiming at the Regional City

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aiming at the REGIONAL CITYa comparative analysis of Tokyos suburb

Master Degree in Urban Design - TU Berlin - SS 2011

Social Conditions of Urban Design

Prof. Harald Bodenschatz

Marco Capitanio_335339


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract 2

Introduction 3Urban form & its sustainability 3

Context 4

Tokyo 4

Koganei 5

Family O. 6

Analysis 7

Compactness & density 7

Open & public space 7

Land uses 9

Transport 10

Green spaces 11

Energy & environment 11

Social infrastructure & lifestyle 11

Conclusions 12

References 14

Image references 14

ABSTRACT

The interest of professionals, politicians and ordinary citizens towards urban design is generally

directed to city centers and historical districts. Despite that, a great percentage of urbanized population

worldwide lives in areas that might be called suburban. I argue that todays main challenge for urban

designers is the understanding and improvement of such areas.

In summer 2011 I had the opportunity to experience ten days of suburban life in the outskirts of Tokyo.

I will analyze the settlement in which I lived, manly from the point of view of urban form, and introduce

comparisons with the European and American context. I will infer that Japanese suburbs have to

be improved focusing on the railway network and the creation of green corridors. They will play the

pivotal role in Tokyos shrinkage and have the potential of becoming an efcient Regional City, as

long as density, compactness and land use policies will sensibly change. After the recent accident

in Fukushima and the consequent Japanese energetic crisis, the discussion about sustainable urban

form and the resilience of cities seems to me more urgent than ever.


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INTRODUCTION

URBAN FORM & ITS SUSTAINABILITY

Urban form is crucial in determining the quality and adaptability of the space we inhabit, and it lays at

the core of the urban design profession at the regional and neighborhood scale. From an internationalperspective, among the many concrete spatial visualizations of current urbanization patterns,mega-

city region,Zwischenstadtor intermediate city (Sieverts 2003), and theregional city(Calthorpe 2001)

seem to be the most useful in terms of implementation into the urban design practice.

Zwischenstadt is a spatial model (mainly used in the german-speaking world) that tries to underline

territorial in-betweenness: given the progressive impairment of National States, the rising role of civil

society and the worsening of environmental problems on a global scale, Zwischenstadt emphasizes

the importance of strategic planning and the strengthening of regional connectivity, while at the same

time recognizing local specicities. A major challenge towards the upgrading of such a model is its

experience in everyday life, both for planners and designers and for citizens, because this concept

tends to remain on a theoretical level that only experts can fully understand. On the other hand, In

the American academic world, we face another concept, that of the regional city. A region is dened

as a large and multifaceted metropolitan area encompassing hundreds of places that we would

traditionally think of as distinct and separate communities(Calthorpe 2001:15). It is composed of three

layers: the economic, the ecological and the social one, each with peculiar characteristics that have

to be recognized and enhanced. Calthorpe compares the regional city to a large-scale neighborhood,

adopting human scale, diversity and conservation as main design principles, and dividing its urban

form among centers, districts, preserves and corridors. Additionally, physical design, focused on

determining regional boundaries, land-use and transportation, is equally involved with social and

economic policies in the making of a successful and sustainable regional city, which implies the rise

of a federal governance.

Despite many publications and researches, the question about sustainable urban form remains an

open one: the vast majority of publications deals in a very analytical way with urban form (e.g. Burton

et al. 2000), but rarely gives guidelines or design advices that could be implemented in practice - an

exception are Hildebrand Frey (1999) and Yosef Rafeq Jabareen (2006), who analyze a settlement

in terms of compactness, sustainable transport, density, mixed land uses, diversity, passive solar

design and greening. Moreover, the interest of designers and politicians tends to be directed to the

city center, leaving the debate about the improvement of suburban areas aside. I argue that suburbs

and sprawl represent nowadays the most demanding challenge for urban designers, and hold an

enormous potential, especially for the future decades.


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CONTEXT

TOKYO

In order to accommodate rapid growth

and keep up with a rush industrialization,Tokyos population grew from 7.5 million

in 1920 to 35 millions in 2007 (g. 1).

Tokyos growth boomed in the 1920s,

when private railway companies started

investing in new suburban lines and

developed housing projects close to

stations, usually targeted for the middle-

class (Okata 2010). Some 40 years later

also public corporations were planning

and building peri-urban estates along

railway axes, so that it can be said that

railway lines played the pivotal role in

the urbanization of the Tokyo area (g.

2). Moreover, a lack of effective land use

regulations and management and a never

implemented green belt (similar to the one

discussed and realized in London from

1935 onwards) resulted in the spread

of urbanized area towards the former

countryside. This created an enormous

urban landscape without solution of

continuity from Tokyo to Osaka. Given

the key role of railway networks and

peoples dependancy on it, in todays

rapidly aging Japan, still saving electricity

after Fukushimas accident and coping

with climate change, the maintenance

and improvement of suburban areas has

necessarily to consider transportation

and energetic issues.

The Kanto area, on a regional scale,

developed monocentrically around

Central Tokyo, which offers ofce and

g. 1: Tokyos urbanization pattern

1886 1914

1945 1986

g. 2: Tokyos railway network in 1995. In red stations to Tokyo

center, in yellow to loop line


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commercial functions: with 23 wards

(they were 15 in 1889 and 35 in 1932), it

attracts commuters from nearby wards,

some of which are considered bedtowns or green suburbs. Among these,

26 cities and three towns in western

Tokyo are administratively part of Tokyo

prefecture and constitute the so-called

Tokyo Metropolitan Area, together with

the Central Tokyo (g. 3). Central Tokyo

shows a density of 140 pph1, Western

Tokyo 35 pph, while Koganei, the example

taken for this paper, presents 100 pph

g. 3: On the right Central Tokyo, on the left Western Tokyo.

Together they form Tokyo Metropolitan Area. The white dot

represents Koganeis location

(Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan 2010). Tokyo Metropolitan

Area, with its 30 million inhabitants is considered the worlds largest urban agglomeration, and, most

interestingly for the scope of this paper, 87% of its population lives in the suburbs (Ohno 2005).

KOGANEI

Koganei (g. 4) reects typicalurbanization patterns that happened in

Tokyo between the 1920s and 1980s.

It lays some 18 km west from Shinjuku,

one of Tokyos centers, and was

ofcially founded in 1958, with about

36.000 people at the time, reaching

nowadays 110.000 inhabitants. A former

village, Koganei developed following

the construction of a railway line and its

center is since then located around the

railway station, built in 1937. Koganei is

considered a green suburb (even though

has the ofcial status of city) for middle-

class, and is composed mainly of single-

1 In the most central 4 wards day- and nighttime densities diverge signicantly: 442 pph daytime working

population and 91 pph nighttime population. (Bureau of Environment TMG 2006)

g. 4: Koganei. East-west railway line with stations, north-

south main street


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family houses. In the following sections

I will describe its main features and

urban form, separately considering each

aspect and exposing its main problemsand challenges. In oder to do so I will rst

introduce Family O. and their lifestyle, so

that my analysis can be embedded in a

more precise social context.

FAMILY O.

Family O. (g. 5) is composed of Kazuhiko

O., former salary-man now retired since

5 years, his wife Ruri O., housewife, their

daughter Anna O., violin player. The elder

daughter, director of her small company,

married recently and is living by her own

since 5 years. The family lives in a two-

story single-family house with a small

garden around, from which they harvest

some vegetables. They own a car, parked

in a very tight space besides the house.

g. 5: Family O. in front of their house

Mr. O. uses his bike as main mean of transport: he spends the most of his time in Koganei, riding to

the tennis- or English-language club and takes care of the garden. Mrs. O. is a full-time housewife: she

goes everyday shopping in Koganei and is the main driver of the household. Miss O., because of her

job, needs to reach daily the center of Tokyo and, apart from some music students whom she receives

at home, does not have any specic relationship to Koganei. She is planning to move out in one year

and nd a more convenient location closer to the center.


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ANALYSIS

COMPACTNESS & DENSITY

While Koganei is formally a city, it has

more the character of a suburb. As wenoted earlier, its density is 100 pph.

Along the two main streets buildings

have an average of 6 oors, ranging

from a minimum of 3 up to 13. The vast

majority of buildings are two-oors

single-family houses with an average

footprint of 150 sq.m. including the tiny

garden which surrounds them. Even

though this pattern is more compact than

European and America suburbs, it leads

to an enormous waste of space, in which

houses and gardens are simply smaller

than their western counterpart (g. 6).

Because of this sort of developments

the Tokyo Metropolitan Area is so spread

out. Many houses are provided with a

minuscule garage, or alternatively the car

is parked outside on an empty spot close

to the building. This contributes to the

g. 6: Above suburban development in Spandau, Berlin.

Below Koganei

overall unattractiveness of the development from the point of view of a pedestrian. Thus, an ordinary

citizen would only walk from his house to the main street or to the station, having no reason at all to

wander through other blocks.

OPEN & PUBLIC SPACE

The main open spaces in Koganei are the streets: the ones leading to the houses are relatively irregular

and very narrow. Even tough they are large enough for only one car, they are two-way streets. Apart

from them, there are only two main streets, crossing at a right angle, one of them leading to the

main station (g. 7). We can say that even the most prominent spots are shaped by street layout

rather than by buildings. Unlike other nearby developments built in the same period (e.g. the close-by

Kunitachi), the train station is not provided with a real square (like in many English garden cities), but

only with an amorphous open space which is actually an enlargement of the street (g. 8). It serves

merely functional purposes, allowing parking space for buses and taxis. This is probably the clearest


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sign of the suburban character of such

a development, lacking in infrastructure

for outdoor public and urban activities.

People would rather meet in their sportand free-time clubs, as Mr. O. does, or

randomly in the park. Such a behavior is

partly due to middle-class lifestyle and

partly to Japanese habits in regard to

use of public space.

One of the most disturbing of them

is the aversion against underground

wiring, resulting in numerous poles that

ruin the functionality and beauty of the

streetscape (g. 9). Alex Kerr (2002:197),

one of the most acute observers of

Japan, writes: Japan is the worlds only

advanced country that does not bury

telephone cables and electric lines. While

a handful of neighborhoods [...] have

succeeded in laying cables underground,

these are mostly expensive showpieces.

Even the most advanced new residential

districts customarily do not bury cables

[...]. In the countryside , a priority policy

dictates that until every large city has

g. 7: High street leading to the station

g. 8: The square besides the main train station


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buried every one of its power lines, which

the Construction Ministry is encouraging

them not to do, no rural area can do

the same with support from the centralgovernment.

Despite outdated rules and regulations -

which often are much more problematic

than the architecture and urban design

in itself - some pedestrian-friendly

improvements can be seen in Koganei.

The main street to the station, originally

designed with modernist standards

in order to facilitate car transit, has

been partly renovated. Sidewalks

were enlarged, some cables buried,

trees and hedges were planted (g.

10). Unfortunately, after Fukushimas

accident, the renovation came to a halt,

due to shifted priorities.

LAND USES

The main advantage of a mixed land

use are the decrease of travel distances

between activities and a lively social

environment. In this respect land use is

one of the biggest problems in Koganei.

In fact, while the same buildings could

host during time different activities, the

division between private and public uses

is mostly permanent. Apart from some

scattered public facilities, shops and

ofces located along the main street,

the rest of the development consists

of housing. If the buildings, which were

generally designed to last a few decades,

can be easily demolished and rebuilt,

g. 9: Poles holding telephone and electric wires in a typical

residential street in Koganei

g. 10: Recent enlargment of sidewalks and newly planted

trees and hedges


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streets do not offer the opportunity to host commercial facilities, since they are too narrow and could

not support any logistic activity. This seems to be the reverse of American suburb, in which streets

are too large and buildings too far away from each other: it has though the potential to be retrotted,

in contrast to the Japanese one.

TRANSPORT

Koganei is served by two train stations on the same east-west railway. It takes 20 minutes to reach

Shinjuku and 30 minutes to reach Tokyo Station. As noted earlier in this paper, railway development

is arguably the single most important factor that determined historically Tokyos urban form. Unlike

American sprawl, boomed with cars use and private mobility, Japanese suburbs still heavily rely on

public transport for daily commuting to the city center - hence the risk of just becoming bed-towns -

and cars are generally used for short-distance travels (e.g. to the supermarket). Thanks to a relatively

efcient railway system many young people, especially singles, choose to live in towns and cities

similar to Koganei in order to avoid high rents in the center, commuting each day to their work places.

Such a mobility pattern is clearly the result of land use policies, separating residence from commerce

and ofces. This brings to the forefront a major problem that Japans urban structure will face in the

next decades, the maintenance of such an expensive and efcient transportation system within an

aging society2. Tokyo Metropolitan Area is thus shrinking and there is widespread concern about this

issue, both among citizens and professionals - see Ohno Idetoshis Fiber City project (g. 11), in

which he proposes a progressive and selective shrinking of suburban areas farther than 800 mt. from

train stations, converting the resulting voids to green corridors.

Car trafc in Koganei ows generally smoothly, even tough nearly every family owns a car. A bus route

runs along the main streets to the railway station. Bike use is not so popular and bikers tend to ride on

the narrow sidewalks, rather than on the streets.

g. 11: Ohnos Fiber City/Tokyo 2050 proposal

2 Japan is the worlds fastest-aging society, surpassing Italy in 2005 (Fuyuno 2007:3). Its elderly population

(above 60) is expected to reach 26% (33.8 millions) of the total population by 2015.


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GREEN SPACES

While Koganei cannot be considered a garden city (neither garden nor city), it hosts the second

largest park in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, opened in 1954. It features a number of attractions

including cherry trees, the tennis courts where Mr. O. goes playing, and the renown Edo-Tokyo Open-Air Architectural Museum. Despite that, the development suffers from an immense lack of green. No

tree can be found along the streets, and given the small size of private gardens, it is rare to nd trees

higher than two oors. What is impressive at most is that Koganeis inhabitants tend to consider it

a green suburb, existing somewhere in their imagination, a sort of perceived/conceived space la

Lefebvre.

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTEnergetic issues have become recently

one of the main concerns of Japanese

people. Besides the challenges of

climate change, the recent accident in

Fukushima forced Japan to foster energy-

saving programs (gg. 12-13). In this

respect the discourse about sustainable

urban form becomes crucial. The single-

family houses pattern and the high

car-ownership rate in Koganei are very

inefcient in terms of energy use. This

is partly compensated by the important

role that the railway line plays. Moreover,

the lack of green spaces and trees favors

the heat-island effect and contributes to

the airs poor quality.

g. 12: Poster at the train station inviting citizens to save energy

SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE & LIFESTYLE

Social infrastructure is an indicator of the

liveliness of a district or city, its degree

of safety and mutual assistance. The

results of a healthy social infrastructure

on the urban environment were best

g. 13: City-newspaper showing daily percentage of citizens

consumed energy


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described by Jane Jacobs (1961) in her

analysis of Greenwich Village in New

York. Even tough houses are densely

packed together, Family O. knows onlyone of their neighboring families and

since schools are very different within

each other, parents tend to choose them

in terms of quality instead of closeness

to their household. Religious values are

also very loose, so people in Koganei

meet together mostly because of sport

and free-time interests.

In regard to suburban lifestyle, the

g. 14: A Sunkus convenient store by the main station

convenience store (konbini in Japanese) deserves an explanation (g. 14). An average family in

Koganei goes to the convenience store several times a week, and its success is due to its multi-

functionality. In fact, besides being a cheap small supermarket, is possible there to send letters, faxes,

copying documents, buying theater tickets and warm dishes coming home after work. It represents in

some ways a certain Japanese way of life, combining different functions in a small space, where social

contact is reduced to a minimum.

CONCLUSIONS

The debate about urban form can be carried out at two levels, a theoretical and prescriptive one, and

a site-specic one (in this case the Japanese context). Let us now introduce them. The debate about

the right urban form is essentially polarized between the boosters of the compact city model, i.e. the

historical European city, and the defenders of suburbia, i.e. the anti-anti-sprawl. In between there are

a variety of positions, from thenew urbanists to the landscape urbanists, mainly debating about the

relationship between urbanity and nature. Since some good argumentations can be found in many

of these different groups, what if a third way was the desirable one, leaving room for some more

compact urban centers and some greener suburban developments? Moreover, suburbia has always

been a complementary part of urban centers throughout history and is now home of a consistent part

of mankind. In modern history a third way dates back to Howards Garden Cities of To-Morrow

(1902), represented by the Town-Country magnet diagram, combining the benets of closeness to

nature with a vibrant social life. This concept emerges regularly in the debate about urbanization, and

we nd one of its most recent rediscovery in the Regional City model by Carlthorpe, which I briey

introduced at the beginning of this paper. I argue that this model holds much potential, especially on


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the long-term view. First, it represents an intermediate administrative scale between the weakening

National State and the all too small city scale, unable to cope with problems like climate change.

Second, it is large enough to comprehend a balance between nature, open space, suburban lifestyles

and decision-making economical centers. Third, in the scientic world the contemporary debateabout sustainable way of life suggests decentralized patterns (e.g. for energy production), rather than

concentration. Fourth, our common sense as human beings tells us that a mixture of many diverse

elements is better than homogeneity.

We have always to keep in mind that this prescriptive part is only what we are aiming at, and the

main challenge of urban design is the improvement of the given environment, rather than the creation

of an alternative one from scratch. This means that the context will set up priorities and goals, like

in the case of Tokyo. It seems clear that Tokyo needs to break up the duality between jobs in the

center and residence in the suburbs, trying to reduce daily commuting through decentralization.

Moreover, given the foreseen population aging and shrinkage, cautious demolition of the most

inconvenient developments could be a helpful principle, maybe together with the establishment of a

growth boundary. This could be a chance to create an infrastructure of green corridors throughout the

Metropolitan Area, matching them with railway lines. A different land-use policy has to be undertaken,

in order to avoid that in some decades suburbs will become ghettos for elderly people and the CDB

an empty spot as soon as employees nish their daily work.


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REFERENCES

Bureau of Environment TMG (2006) Comparison of Cities in the World, [online], available: http://www2.kankyo.

metro.tokyo.jp/kouhou/env/eng_2006/chapter2.html, [accessed 21 Aug. 2011]

Burton, E., Jenks, M. & Williams, K. (2000) Compact City Series: Achieving Sustainable Urban Form, London - NewYork: Routledge

Calthorpe, P. & Fulton, W. (2001) The Regional City, 1st ed., Washington, Covelo, London: Island Press

Frey, H. (1999) Designing the City: Towards a More Sustainable Urban Form, 1st ed., London: Routledge

Fuyuno, I. (2007) AGEING SOCIETY in JAPAN[online] Tokyo, available: http://www.bsra.org.uk/les/ageing%20

society%20report%20part%20I.pdf [accessed 11 Sep. 2011]

Howard, E. (1946) Garden Cities of To-Morrow [originally published in 1902]. London: Faber and Faber

Jabareen, Y.R. (2006) Sustainable Urban Forms: Their Typologies, Models, and Concepts, Journal of PlanningEducation and Research, 26 (1), 38-52

Jacobs, J. (1961) The Death and Life of Great American Cities, New York: Random House

Kerr, A. (2002) Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan, Penguin Group

Koganei City (2003) History of Koganei (in Japanese), [online], available: http://www.city.koganei.lg.jp/kakuka/

shogaigakushubu/syougaigakusyuuka/siryou/bunnkazaikakari/sanpo04.html, [accessed 19 Aug. 2011]

Ohno, H. (2005) Fiber City/Tokyo 2050 [online] 2005, available: http://www.bercity2050.net/eng/bercityENG.html

[accessed 11 Sep. 2011]

Okata J. & Sorensen A. (eds.) (2010) Tokyos Urban Growth, Urban Form and Sustainability, in: Megacities: Urban

Form, Governance, and Sustainability, [online] Heidelberg: Springer, 15-41, available: www.springer.com/cda/

content/document/cda_downloaddocument/9784431992660-c1.pdf, [accessed 19 Aug. 2011]

Siebert, L. (2001) GIS-Based Visualization of Tokyos Urban History, in: Proceedings of the Computers in Urban

Planning and Urban Management (CUPUM 2001) Conference, [online] 2001, Manoa: University of Hawaii Press,

available: www.fas.harvard.edu/~chgis/meetings/papers/Siebert-TokyoVisual.PDF, [accessed 19 Aug. 2011]

Sieverts, T. (2003) Cities Without Cities: An Interpretation of the Zwischenstadt, English language ed, London:

Routledge

Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan (2010) Population Census of Japan,

Preliminary Counts of the Population and Households, [online], available: http://www.e-stat.go.jp/SG1/estat/XlsdlE.do?sind=000008640424, [accessed 21 Aug. 2011]

IMAGE REFERENCES

All images were taken or elaborated by the author except the following:

p. 4 above: Okata & Sorensen 2010:17

p. 4 below: Siebert 2011:16

p. 10: Ohno 2005

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