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Urban Planning

In Japan, land readjustment (LR) has been one the most important        urban planning methods, to the point that Japan is referred as

“The Mother of City Planning” (Toshi Keikaku no Haha). About one third of all urban areas have been developed with this method. Land

readjustment refers to where land-owners pool ownership of scattered

and irregular lots of agricultural land, build main infrastructure and roadsand then sub-divide the land into urban plots. There are several main reasons why LR is important in urban planning. The first one being that LR is a key part of Japanese urban planning system and has played an important role in the development of Japanese urban planning practice.

 

The second reason is that LR has been a subject of substantial

international interest as a land development technique. For example,

countries in Asia have often sought advice from Japanese urban

developers to teach and build urban developers practices using the land

readjustment method. [1]

Tokyo’s urban redevelopment policy is often described as neoliberal, it claims that deregulation of urban development projects has made easy for developers to replace low-income residents with higher income professionals, creating a spatial inequality that has increased among Tokyo’s communities. [3]

 

The “Formulae for Basic Urban Planning”[4]helps to explain the concept of urban development. It is composed of three sections. The first one is called “Formulae for horizontal development and improvement in urban areas” and it is subdivided intro 5 points.

Figure 1. Case Study cities areas, urban growth, LR Projects [1]

  • The total area of small, useless vacant space increases as the density of building increases.

  • The length of the supply network depends on both the quantity of building units and the area of network coverage.

  • Congestion of a central area surrounded by a radial and loop road pattern is heavier than that surrounded by a grid pattern.

  • There exists a certain road density that may minimize required transportation time.

  • There exists a certain road density that may minimize required transportation energy.

 

The second section, “Formulae for energy saving in transportation for commuting and business purposes” is made up of 4 subtopics:

 

  • Promote a modal shift to mass transit that may reduce energy consumption.

  • Promote energy saving in commuting by encouraging people to live near their place of work.

  • Encourage office to locate according to the traffic they generate.

  • Develop mass transit within a commuting area of each business core to construct multicentric business districts.

 

The last section, “Formulae for high rise buildings for the development/improvement in urban areas” has 4 subsections:

 

  • There exists a base-to-height ratio, for a model of a city as three-dimensional space that may minimize transportation time.

  • There exists a base-to-height ratio, for a model of a city as three-dimensional space that may minimize transportation energy.

  • Restrain the urban sprawl and utilize unused land and promote multistoried buildings to guide the effective use of land and urban growth.

  • Utilize aerial and underground space in areas with high land use potential to reduce long-distance transportation demand.

 

Figure 2. Development of Tokyo City Centre [2]

 

 

References:

 

[1] Sorensen, Andre. Land Readjustment, Urban Planning and Urban Sprawl in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area (1999). Carfax Publishihng.

 

[2] Asato, Saito & Thornley, Andy. Shifs in Tokyo’s World City Status and the Urban Planning Response (2001). Urban Studies, Vol. 40, No. 4 665-685.

 

[3] Hein, Carola. Shaping Tokyo: Land Development and Planning Practice in the Early Modern Japanese Metropolis.(2010). Journal of Urban

 

[4] Tamagawa, Hidenori. Sustainable Cities: Japanese Perspectives on Physical and Social Structures (2006). United Nations University Press.

 

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