Tokyo and its waterfront

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Tokyo and its waterfront

Dissertation, June 2012 Klaas Dhaene

Dissertation, June 2012

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Klaas Dhaene

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Ausmip R&DaR, WENK. Sint-Lucas Department of Architecture 2011-2012

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Figure 1 (cover). Collage of land reclamation in Tokyo Bay during the 20th century and the Plan for Tokyo 1960 of Kenzo Tange.

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Table of contents Introduction 1. Spatial layout of Tokyo and the Tsukiji market Tokyo The Tsukiji area Relocation of Tsukiji fish market 2. Tokyo Waterfront developments Tokyo, from the ‘City of Water’ to the ‘City of Land’ The post-war period: Tokyo, back to the water? Kenzo Tange’s Tokyo Bay Plan (1961) Artificial islands built in Tokyo Bay Late 1980s: New waterfront developments and the ‘bubble economy’ 3. Introduction to Case Studies: Tokyo Teleport Town and Minato Mirai 21 4. Tokyo Teleport Town An antithesis of the mother city Structured spatial layout and coordinated planning Public domain and accessibility of the sea Unbiased approach towards all transportation modes An example for Tokyo and Tokyo’s flagship to the world 5. Minato Mirai 21 Similarities between Minato Mirai 21 and Tokyo Teleport Town Dissimilarities between Minato Mirai 21 and Tokyo Teleport Town Influences by Metabolism? 6. Conclusion Overkill of public space Interaction with the waterfront? Economic pressure results in a unilateral program Defective relation with the neighbourhood The slow process of urban planning in an ever faster changing society 7. Tsukiji redevelopment Bibliography

Introduction Impressed and confused. These were my feelings on my first days in Tokyo. Impressed, as the city looked endless, as if stretching all over Japan, well organised and behaved. Impressed, by the shouting billboards, the crowds, the elevated highways. Confused, because of its amorphous structure, without guidance on how to read it. Confused, since I expected to arrive in the biggest city of the planet, more urban than Manhattan, but instead I felt like walking in a gigantic suburban area. The neighbourhoods packed with individual houses and narrow apartments confused me since I was not prepared for this kind of small-scale living in the heart of the city. My sense for density had to be redefined, in order to comprehend density on the scale of Tokyo. My European frame of reference was inadequate to guide me through the narrow streets, cluttered constructions and an average house size of just 64.5m2. Tokyo is an ideal environment to study architecture. Is the cradle of the widely appreciated Japanese contemporary architecture, with its specific, intriguing approach. The city itself strengthens this by the array of networks, its multiple and diverse centres, its never ending expansion that astounds me time and again. Different transport modes let me experience the city in different ways. The crowded but sophisticated subway quickly took me from one centre to the other, which I explored on foot. Occasionally, cabs guided me smoothly through the traffic and are an experience on their own with the drivers’ quirky politeness, little rituals, spotless suits and white gloves. Biking gave me a feeling of liberty while I struggled with the disciplined but confident driving style of passing cars, passed underneath elevated highways and tried to orientate myself in the urban jungle. Every trip in the city became a discovery of hidden masterpieces of architecture, even if I had seen them before in magazines, but now they were popping up everywhere and unexpectedly. The many museums, galleries (for example, the Toto gallery, located above a showroom of the country’s biggest company in sanitary equipment but also, oddly, a major publisher) and happenings strengthen the value of the city. The omnipresence of art, culture and architecture generates a constant stream of discoveries and rediscoveries. As an example, I incidentally attended a Pecha Kucha night at the original venue where the 20x20-second presentation method was invented.

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The Metabolism architectural movement, which was influential in the 1960s and 1970s, received renewed attention in the Fall of 2011. An exhibition about Metabolism was organized in the Mori Art Museum and, almost simultaneously, Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich published their book ‘Project Japan. Metabolism talks…’. This first non-Western avant-garde movement rose to prominence 50 years ago, as a Japanese reaction to the decline of Modernism and the CIAM congresses. The movement languished 25 years later, after a period of hectic activity with radically new ideas for developing cities, reclaiming the ocean and changing our way of living. Tokyo was the laboratory where they tested their futuristic ideas. Japan’s capital is a harbour city, located in the Tokyo Bay area, with not only an impressive expansion into the sea in the form of artificial islands, but even the city centre is partly built on reclaimed land. Nevertheless, walking, living or working in the city hardly gives the impression of proximity to the water, and the shoreline does not provide a reference point for the daily life of the Tokyoites. However, the water played a vital role during the Edo period when the city grew enormously and was known as the Floating World of Edo, an urban culture of entertainment around the vivid waterfront. The vibrancy faded away during the 20th century when industries took over the entire zone linked to water and the city turned its back towards the sea. During the 1980s, a revival of the waterfront took place, following a worldwide re-appreciation of waterfronts, with gigantic developments driven by the expanding economy of the tertiary sector. The new waterfront organisation and its layout are radically different from the existing urban fabric of Tokyo. How did the planners of these projects read the city of Tokyo? And in which way were these mega-projects influenced by the previously flourishing and progressive ideas of the Metabolism movement? In 1992, while the projects were still in the early stages of their development, they were confronted with the burst of the economic bubble. Did this dramatic change of economic conditions affect the intended plans and how did the development react on the ensuing lack of interest and investments?

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1. Spatial layout of Tokyo and the Tsukiji area Tokyo Tokyo is world’s biggest urban agglomeration with more than 36 million inhabitants in 2009.1 One quarter of the Japanese population lives in the Tokyo area, which experienced an extreme growth during the 20th century causing issues related to urban layout and environment. Recently, the city is facing new challenges due to economic stagnation (a prolonged period of no or low growth) and an aging society. The city passed through some tragic disasters during the 20th century with the Kanto earthquake in 1923 and the devastating bombing during the Second World War. These catastrophes destroyed the major part of the historic urban fabric, so it is hard to find architectural traces of the ‘old Tokyo’. Nevertheless the city has always been rebuilt following the existing street patterns, so the urban structure mainly formed during the Edo period (1603-1867) created the framework of today’s city. Tokyo may not have ancient buildings such as other capitals around the world, but the intriguing clew of constructions and the organic street pattern create for every place in the city a characteristic atmosphere that reflect the history of the district.2,3 The capital can be seen as a patchwork of various types of urban spaces with diverse metropolitan issues. At the moment, there is no need or possibility of drastic changes to the spatial layout due to the population stagnation and aging society. It should be preferable to improve the existing urban spaces in order to increase quality of life.4 Central city neighbourhoods with high densities and an intensive mixture of different land uses together with urban communities are, according to Jane Jacobs, vital for healthy cities. She described the importance of the human scale in every part of the city to ensure urban safety.5 The urban layout of Tokyo fits into this theory since anywhere in Tokyo, nearby any centre there are residential neighbourhoods with narrow streets and small shops, providing an cosy atmosphere. The vending machines for drinks and the clutter of parked bikes and potted 1  United Nations, World Urbanisation prospects, 2009 2  Hidenobu J., Tokyo. A spatial Anthropology, University of California Press, 1995, p. 1-6 3  Sorensen A., Okata J., Megacities. Urban Form, Governance and Sustainability, Springer, 2011, p. 15-17 4  Ibid, p. 39 5  Jacobs J., The Death and Live of Great American Cities, 1961 [6]

Figure 2. Devastated landscape in Tokyo after the Kanto Earthquake.

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plants in front of houses create a familiar impression. Narrow roads meander heavily, inviting pedestrians, bikes and cars to share the street. Most of the city is shaped by the pre-modern street layout and by the unplanned urbanization during the 20th century. It can be viewed as a result of social structures and economic interests on every scale.6 A dense, safe and punctual train and subway network interconnects the city. This network not only provides the major transport mode (73% of the commuters use the subway or railway) within the city but also works as a tool for orientation. Tourists, for example, explore the city rather by subway and the walking radiuses around the stations than by linking all places together by roads. The unofficial inner city of Tokyo is often described as the zone within the Yamanote line, including the Central Business District and the Imperial Palace. This loop-line goes around the city in 63 minutes and many subcentres are based around one of the 23 stops. These stations are all known by the Tokyoites and play an important role in their mental map of the city. They function as main transfers for the subway lines within the city and the trains going into the suburbs. In order to pay the railway infrastructure, private railway companies developed the sites around the suburban stations and sold or rented the commercial and residential facilities. Public corporations created new towns along these lines since the 1960s, which were developed as garden suburbs. This caused an unplanned and haphazard sprawl during the second part of the 20th century. The local governments of these suburbs now suffer from the costs of maintenance of the infrastructure such as roads, sewerage, parks and community facilities, while facing depopulation and aging inhabitants.7 The geographical centre of the city and the CBD is Tokyo station, one of the busiest stations in the capital and located nearby the Imperial Palace. The street pattern of the neighbourhood Marunouchi, located between the station and the palace, has regular grid layout. The CBD expands to the north, covering the Otemachi quarter, and to the east towards Nihonbashi. This was the commercial heart of the city during the Edo period, where Tokyo’s first department stores and financial buildings were located. The main street in this quarter is Chuo-Dori, running to Ginza station, and is the commercial spine of the CBD, hosting the flagships of many companies. During the economical boost in the 1980s, the CBD rapidly expanded in all directions. One of the most spectacular growths is towards the West of 6  Sorensen A., The Making of Urban Japan. Cities and planning from the Edo to the twenty-first century, Routledge, 2004, p. 1-4 7  Cybriwsky R., Tokyo. The Changing Profile of an Urban Giant, G.K. Hall, 1991, p. 41-45 [8]

Tokyo. This expansion is not only joining the existing business centre such as the new developments in Akasaksa and Nagatacho, but also started to evolve in a polycentric way. Shibuya, Roppongi, Ikebukuro and Shinjuku became important new centres at the West side of the city with residential quarters in between. This evolution didn’t happen all at once. Since the Edo period, the West side remains the higher prestige zone of Tokyo and benefits from its international character with the location of many foreign embassies. The other axis of growth is towards the waterfront, where Tokyo Bay touches the city together with the Sumida River, which flows through the east side of Tokyo. These original zones of docking facilities, warehouses and industry started to change in the 1980s. Offices nestled in between, overlooking the waterside. Similar to the expansion to the West, the new developments skipped some neighbourhood in between the CBD and the waterfront in order to develop high-rise buildings right on the river banks. The development in Shiodome is the biggest office space expansion in the centre, located on a former rail freight distribution centre of 26 hectares. It is called ‘a new town in a town’ since the cluster of office towers, high-rise residences and shopping centres were planned and constructed simultaneously. The site foto

Figure 3. Dense but familial neighbourhoods in between the centres of the city.

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is located next to the Hamarikyu gardens and overlooks the mouth of the Sumida River into Tokyo Bay. It is the largest development of the CBD close to the waterfront and is a precursor of the full take-over of the water banks by the financial centre.8 The Tsukiji area Located next to the Shiodome development and the Hamarikyu gardens is Tsukuji fish market. This historical trading place is famous and is known as the biggest fish market in the world. Rumours are going around that the fish market will be relocated in 2014 to an artificial island in the bay. Tsukiji fish market has a long history and behaves as a completely different world within the city. Visiting the market confronts the visitor with a traditional economy of traders, auctions and wholesalers. Around 1600 stalls of family businesses are located in gigantic but outdated halls, where wholesalers prepare and resell fish, bought from the auctions earlier that day. An extremely busy transport system looks like an anthill with crossing cars, lorries and small 8  Ibid. p. 114-125 Figure 4. Woodblock print of a vivid fish market in the 18th century.

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Figure 5. The actual Tsukiji fish market.

trucks. Around 32.000 vehicles pass every day through the gates, putting pressure on the neighbourhood since the market is not designed to be flexibly accessible by car. Dazed tourists walk around and are surprised about the business, the small wholesalers stalls and the traditional way of trading.9 The traces of the market go back to the 16th century when a fish market was established next to the Nihonbashi Bridge, the lively centre of Tokyo during the Edo period. During the end of the 19th century, the location of the market in the heart of the city became an issue. A messy and smelly atmosphere didn’t fit in the modernizing financial district and plans were made to move the market. The city government couldn’t relocate the market because of heavy protests by public and traders, but this changed when the Kanto earthquake in 1923 devastated the entire site. A new market was built in the Tsukiji neighbourhood next to the water, and opened in 1935. The fresh products sold at the market arrived by train, via the adjacent cargo station of Shiodome and via ship from the pier along the mouth of the Sumida River. The market buildings were built in an arch shape to enable the arrival of long cargo trains. During the late 1960s, the issue of market relocation popped up again since the city had expanded and squeezed the place between the vibrant centre and the water. The infrastructure became outdated and 9  Bestor T., “Tokyo no Daidokoro : Research on the Tsukiji Wholesale Fish Market “, in The Japan Foundation Newsletter, Vol. XVII/No. 4, 1990, p. 17-21

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the cargo transport changed from ships and railway to trucks. In order to respond to the needs of the metropolis, the market needed either a thorough transformation on site or a modern new market in a different location. A new site was reclaimed from the sea for relocation, just north of Haneda airport. When a new but smaller fish market opened on this site, just a few traders moved in and the relocation out of the centre didn’t work out. Finally, plans were created to reconstruct the market at the current location in Tsukiji and the construction started in 1990, with the addition of parking garages. The economic recession during the 1990s brought this transformation to a halt before any of the auction or wholesaler halls of 1935 were renovated. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG), who owns the land and the market, changed its mind again and announced in 2001 the construction of an entire new market complex in Toyosu, one of the artificial islands in the bay.10,11 Relocation of the Tsukiji fish market The industry of the Tsukiji fish market is in decline because of its cumbersome trade system and the changing diet of the Japanese towards more meat instead of fish. In the past, the auction of fish was the largest transaction of fish from wholesalers via middle traders to retailers or restaurants. Nowadays, most retailers skip the auctioning and middle traders and buy their fish with a one-to-one business straight from the wholesalers. In 2009 only 15% of the total fish sold in Tsukiji was auctioned. Supermarkets even try to avoid fish markets at all and buy more and more directly from fishermen. By skipping the entire process of brokers, costs are lowered and the fish can be transported straight from the vessels to the producing centres. The total value of transactions at the market has almost halved from its peak in 1990.12,13 The TMG recently reconfirmed the relocation to the island in Toyosu, aiming to open the new market in 2014.14 Proponents and opponents use many 10 ����������������������������������������������� Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market, “Tsukiji Market. The Past, Present and Future”, in Japan Spotlight, Sept./Oct. 2006, p. 46-48 11 ������������ Bestor T., Tsukiji. The Fish Market at the Centre of the World, University of California Press, 2004, p. 91-125 12 ��������������� Watanabe S., “Tsukiji traders struggle for survive”, in The Asahi Shimbun, www.asahi. com/english (accessed April 2012), originally published on 2010/04/06 13 ������������� Fukada T., “Busy auctions masks Tsukiji decline”, in The Japan Times, www. japantimes.co.jp (accessed April 2012), originally published on 2010/05/08 14 �������������� Fukada T., “Tsukiji to relocate to Toyosu”, in The Japan Times, www.japantimes.co.jp (accessed April 2012), originally published on 2010/10/23 [12]

arguments to justify or condemn the planned relocation. The opponents are mainly the middle traders and the secondary fish business of restaurant and fish shops around the market, which are not integrated in the new plans. They are united in an organization called SOS: Save our Sushi! - Save our Tsukiji!. Independent environmental organizations criticize the relocation too but on different arguments such as the contaminated grounds of the new location. The proponents are, logically speaking, the TMG that organizes the relocation, but also many wholesalers. They are aware of the precarious situation and the changing economic situation in the fishing industry. They seek to modernize the sector in order to survive. Probably the biggest opponent is the economic power of the CBD because the value of the site is incredibly high, located between the bay and the CBD. As an outside observer it is hard to judge the situation and therefore I briefly summarize the main arguments of both parties. The opponents’ views:15, 16 - A reconstruction on the existing site would be a potential alternative without disturbing the functioning of the market if the project would be carried out in several phases. - The secondary industry around the market creates a lively area and this would completely disappear if a relocation took place. - The site provided for relocation is a former industrial zone and is heavily contaminated. - The TMG, owner of the grounds and manager of the market, serves the capitalistic goals of the CBD instead of the well-being of the Tokyoites. - Every day, tourists from all around the world visit the market and they appreciate its unique character. The proponents’ views: - The Tsukiji market is clearly in decline due to its obsolete and cumbersome economic system of trading. In order to revive the sector, it is necessary to relocate and modernize the entire system. - The current location was a perfect place in 1935, next to the freight station of Shiodome and the pier for arriving ships. Since the transport modes changed to trucks and airplanes, these two location qualities are not up to date anymore. The current location is even not optimal for road transport and causes much nuisance to the neighbourhood. 15 ��������������������������������������������������������������� http://greenvoice.com/SaveOurTsukiji (consulted in March 2012) 16 ��������������� Cyranoski D., Missing data sparks fear over land clean-up, http://www.nature.com (accessed April 2012), originally published on 2010/04/26

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The current location could be used for much more profitable use such as an expansion of the CBD. The new site in Toyosu will host a bigger market and the possibility for expansion, combined with a much better accessibility for motorized transport.

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Figure 6. A brief map of the centre of Tokyo. [14]

The construction of the new fish market is being built and the removal seems to be irreversible. This causes an opportunity for the TMG to redevelop the 30-hectare ground, right now probably one of the most desired terrains in the centre because of its location and the scale compared to the fragmented land around. The next stage after this research paper is my final architectural design and I will focus on the redevelopment of the Tsukiji area. Such kind of development should be positioned in the evolution of the Tokyo Bay and this will not be the first development along the waterfront in Tokyo, since many projects started in the late 1980s and 1990s. What are the opportunities of a redevelopment of this site? And what are the actual needs of the city of Tokyo? How did the other projects develop, what were their goals, final outcomes and planning principles? And what are the lessons to be learned from these projects?

2. Tokyo Waterfront developments Tokyo, from the ‘City of Water’ to the ‘City of Land’ “It is all but forgotten today that Tokyo’s low city was once a city equal to Venice in its charms.” (Hiddenobu Jinnai, 1995) The spatial layout of Tokyo was formed in three different periods, all with a particular responsibility for today’s urban space. The first and most important was the Edo period (1603-1867), when the urban structure of the current city formed. During this time, the castle-town used the topography of the area to develop a system of roads and canals in order to divide the city in different zones according to the social classes of warriors, commoners and farmers. The warriors lived in the high-elevated part of the city, while the commoners were located in the low-elevated part, in the delta of the bay on reclaimed land from the Sumida river. After the Great Meireiki Fire in 1657, the city moved beyond its first framework and transformed to the garden city (high city) and city on water (low city). The Meji period (1867-1912) followed. This was the time when the feudal system ended and contacts with the rest of the world were re-established after 250 years of isolation. The age of civilization started and modern Western elements and Western-style buildings replaced many constructions in the city, but the urban framework stayed almost unchanged. The third period of change was during the 1920s, when Western ideas of city planning were introduced. Before, only the buildings itself were influenced by [15]

Figure 7. Tokyo during the Edo period with a lively atmosphere around the bridges.

Western-style elements, but now Western elements intervened in the urban pattern of the city. The sense of beauty and comfort in the urban grid were transferred from Europe to Japan and modern urban spaces were created. The few existing parks, plazas, street corners and avenues we know today in Tokyo were created during this period.17, 18 During the Edo period, the city of Tokyo was a city based on water, with the centre penetrated by many canals and the waterfront functioning as the most vibrant urban space. This image today is unthinkable with the shores covered by industry and offices, elevated highways that run over the waterways, and many canals that were covered during the modernization of the city. The lower part of the city during the Edo period was built along the canals and on reclaimed delta land. The network of canals was responsible not only as the main transport mode for goods, but also for the drainage of rainwater from the streets, the source of water for industry and the dumping of waste. Vessels from all over the country arrived in the bay and transferred their cargo to smaller barges. These transported the goods by the network 17  Hidenobu J., Tokyo. A spatial Anthropology, University of California Press, 1995, p. 1-6 18  Cybriwsky R., Tokyo. The Changing Profile of an Urban Giant, G.K. Hall, 1991, p. 62-65 [16]

of canals into the city and unloaded their goods at the quays. The waterfront sides of the canals were the economic heart of the city and gave first priority to commerce and the distribution of products. Further away from the centre, warehouses made place for teahouses and natural embankment with lined up cherry trees. Bridges in the centre, such as Nihonbashi Bridge, formed the most important public place with shops around, views of the thriving market and serving as an equivalent of European squares. The pattern of canals and the economic and social activities next to it remained intact during the Meji period. After the Kanto earthquake in 1923, the government sold many public canal-side areas in order to obtain money for the reconstruction of the infrastructure. Water transport was still in use, but the banks changed to dense stone warehouses combined with industry and less public facilities around.19 At the end of the Meji period, Tokyo Bay was transformed into an industrial belt of factories and warehouses, replacing the residential areas. The urban population increased and the intensive network of canals in the city was drained and filled. The original watercourses were reshaped into railroads, roads, industrial zones and residential areas. The city changed from a city on water to a city on land. This does not suggest the water didn’t play a role anymore, but it lost its commercial, social and public role in the centre of the city. Since the start of the 20th century, factories along the waterfront in the bay started to pollute the environment – water, soil and air – heavily, destroying 19  Ibid, p. 66-118 Figure 8. Western style park next to the Sumida river in the 1920s.

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the last remaining romance of the Edo period. The internal transport by barrels declined with the arrival of railroads in the 1920s. On the streets, trams, buses and cars replaced rickshaws. These shifts in transport modes changed the relationship between the city and the waterfront completely.20 Following the Western models of watersides, meant to create a beautiful city, some banks of the Sumida River were transformed into promenades during the 1920s. This Western relationship with the water contrasted with the views of the Edo period, when the waterfront area was used for businesses, vibrant city life and public entertainment. Examples of such Western-inspored banks are the Hamacho Park and the Sumida Park, two modern walkways next to the river, designed with the purpose of fostering public health, rest, hygiene and calm recreation. Notwithstanding the influence of Western design principles, cherry trees were planted to integrate the popular flower viewing in springtime, a tradition since the Edo period.21 The post-war period: Tokyo, back to the water? 20 ���������������� Takahashi N., “Changes in Tokyo’s Waterfront Environment”, in Japanese Urban Environment, Pergamon, 1998, p. 147-177 21 ������������ Jinnai H., Public Places in Asia Pacific Cities. Current Issues and Strategies, Kluwer, 2001, p. 49-70 Figure 9. Tokyo after the Second World War.

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After the Second World War, Japan’s capital had to rebuild many parts of the city from scratch. The capital’s number of inhabitants dropped from around 7 million to 2.8 million between 1940 and 1945, caused by emigration to the safer countryside. Afterwards, most of them returned and the population of Tokyo rapidly increased, from 2.8 million in 1945 to 8.3 million in 1960.22 The city expanded without any effective organization of urban layout and so it retained its pre-modern structure. Nevertheless, the population explosion and industrialization was the perfect chance to transform the city with a powerful master plan. However, in order to meet the enormous housing demand, low quality buildings were built ad hoc on all empty lots. The government tried to guide this gigantic reconstruction of the city with different plans, but failed by the lack of power and financial capacity. By 1950, only 6.8% of the rebuilt constructions were built according to the proposed redevelopment plan.23 Captains of industry and Japanese architects agreed that Tokyo was incurable and they called it ‘the world’s largest village’.24 The increasing car ownership, combined with poor road infrastructure, led to huge traffic problems. The 22  Siebert L., GIS-Based Visualization of Tokyo’s Urban History, University of Akron, 2001 23  Hein C., Diefendorf J., Ishida Y., Rebuilding Urban Japan after 1945, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, p. 50-67 24  Kawazoe N., “A New Tokyo: In On, or above the sea?”, in This is Japan 9, 1962, p. 5758

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road system was based on a centripetal pattern and measures to broaden the thoroughfares resulted in even more congestion. The problem was so urgent that newspapers in the 1960s openly discussed the possibility to split the beloved Imperial Park in order to build a crossing highway.25 Land prices skyrocketed due to quick industrialization and growth. Together with the fragmentation of land ownership in the centre, it became almost impossible to gather enough land for large-scale (public) developments. In 1965, Erhard Hursch described the situation in his book Tokyo as follows: “Tokyo is a huge wilderness, a conglomerate of wooden cubes and concrete blocks, main arteries and narrow alleys, waterways and rail beds, of trees, cables and sighs - a jungle crammed with people and filled with the roar of engines.” (Ergard Hurch, 1965)26 25  Ibid 26  Hursch E., Tokyo, Charles E. Tuttle, 1965 Figure 10. The Sputnik satellite.

Figure 12. The first flight of the Concorde in 1969.

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Figure 11. Archigram. Cities of the next century.

Figure 13. First man on the moon in 1961.

Figure 14. Different proposals for developments in the Tokyo Bay area.

Twenty years before the Second World War, the Kanto earthquake destroyed 63% of the houses in Tokyo. Ambitious reconversion plans were set up, in order to transform the city with boulevards, parks and an improvement of municipal services.27 The plans were never carried out due to the same difficulties of fragmented land ownership and lack of finances. The Second World War wiped out 40% of the buildings in Tokyo and this was the second failed chance during the twentieth century to reform the capital. In contradiction with the urban situation of Tokyo, the post-war period saw an international wave of hyper-engineering. The Russians sent the Sputnik 1 as the first satellite into space in 1957. Kennedy announced the first man on the moon in 1961. The supersonic aircraft Concorde was invented. This technological boom made the world and the architectural movement dream without limits (e.g., the Walking Cities of Archigram). In the spirit of the age, architects, policymakers and planners in Japan came up with the idea that the solution of the post-war problems of Tokyo could be solved by the inhabitation of Tokyo Bay. The bay was seen before as a geographical 27  Hein C., Diefendorf J., Ishida Y., Rebuilding Urban Japan after 1945, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, p. 50-67

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boundary but now became a zone for free growth with the help of modern technology. Kenzo Tange’s Plan for Tokyo 1960 became world-famous, but he wasn’t the only one who created a proposal for the reclamation of the bay. Between 1957 and 1961, many plans were proposed, all with different approaches and outcomes and these inspired Tange when he proposed his plans in 1961. “Tokyo has been left to expand beyond control and is now a huge mess... Learning from my own experience, I arrived at this idea of creating an estate where there are no landowners.” (Hisaakira Kano, 1958) In 1959, Hisaakira Kano, the president of the Japan Housing Corporation and responsible for the rehabilitation of the housing market after the Second World War, published the Neo-Tokyo Plan. Together with the Industrial Planning Committee, he proposed a set of artificial islands in the bay, each serving different purposes. The islands would be built around one big central island including an international airport. A railroad and a double-loop expressway would connect the city with the islands. The required soil filling would be found by using an atomic bomb to destroy a nearby mountain. Kano was convinced about this method and supported his idea with scientific research about non-military uses of nuclear explosives.28 This futuristic plan by a prominent government member illustrates the seriousness of the proposals during the 1960s about the expansion of the city into the bay. Metabolism architects (cf. infra) were inspired by Kano’s proposal and started to think about alternative bay colonization plans. They argued that artificial 28  Koolhaas R., Obrist H.U., Project Japan. Metabolism talks, Taschen, 2011, p. 276 [22]

Figures: 15. Land reclamation. 16. Neo-Tokyo Plan by Hisaakira Kano. 17. The City on Tokyo Bay by Masato Otaka 18. Ocean City by Kisho Kurokawa 19. Kenzo Tange standing in front of a model from his Tokyo Bay plan during a television show.

islands were inefficient since the buildings on it would still require foundations into the original solid seabed. In 1959, Masato Otaka proposed the City on Tokyo Bay, laid out as a horseshoe in the centre of the bay. His idea was different from Kano’s since it did not expand the original coast, but created an independent structure on the water. The structure would not use soil for artificial islands, but would be anchored directly to the original seabed. A grid structure was proposed, based on a hierarchical highway system combined with apartments. Otaka emphasized that his plan would be a solution for the complicated land ownership and proposed to move all the inhabitants of the city into the new structure, while Tokyo itself should be converted into farmland. This plan is one of the most radical since Otaka didn’t connect to the existing city and he even proposed to wipe out the historical capital. Still other plans were proposed such as a complete floating Marine City by Kiyonori Kikutake

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and the Ocean City, by Kisho Kurokawa, made out of individual floating helixes linked together to create cells. Kenzo Tange’s Tokyo Bay Plan (1961) Tange’s plan for Tokyo Bay City in 1961 was probably the most realistic of all proposals since he combined the idealism of the architects and the pragmatism of the powerful industrial leaders. He did not neglect the existing city. He started from the historical layout and made a plan to transform the inner city and to expand it towards the bay area. Tange was the godfather of the young Metabolism movement, founded in 1960 in a pamphlet entitled Metabolism 1960 - The Proposals for the New Urbanism. This group of young Japanese architects rejected the Modernism view on the city as a mechanical object and approached it instead as an organic process. Their proposals for expanding cities clearly separated the transient elements and the permanent structures, according to their metabolic life cycles. Driven by fast technological progress, they made proposals of new and expanding cities in a futuristic way, using megastructures. Their visions were never realized on the scale of the city, but the architects managed to integrate their perspectives in various constructions. The most well-known are the pavilions for the World Fair in Osaka in 1970 and the capsule tower in Tokyo, created by Kurokawa in 1972.29 The ‘megastructure’ concept was co-invented by Fumihiko Maki, one of the founders of the Metabolism group. Maki describes in his book Investigations in Collective Form three prototypes of urban forms: the compositional form, the group form and the megastructure. He describes the megastructure as “a large frame in which all the functions of a city or part of a city are housed” (Fumihiko Maki, 1964). These megastructures became possible thanks to the present technology. Reyner Bahnam’s writes his book Megastructure in 1967 and he describes them as the dinosaurs of the Modern Movement, according to the hundreds of projects proposed everywhere over the world of this popular architectural concept. He concludes megastructures always exist on two scales, the structural framework and the modular units. The different lifetimes of the framework and the units make it possible to expand the structure in an unlimited spatial way. To summarize we can say the megastructure is a gigantic urban framework accommodating numerous 29  Lin Z.-J., “From Megastructure to Megalopolis: Formation and Transformation of Megaprojects in Tokyo Bay”, in Journal of Urban Design, Vol.12, 2007, p. 77 << Figure 20. Tokyo Bay plan with the central spine and the floating A-shaped residential blocks.

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individual and modular units, integrated with infrastructure and serving as a self-contained area.30 In the publication A Plan for Tokyo, 1960 - Towards a Structural Reorganization, Tange introduced the concept of ‘Pivotal Cities’. These are cities with more than ten million inhabitants, and because of their size, “the cities had grown too old to cope with the current rate of expansion” (Kenzo Tange, 1961). According to Tange, the only possibility to save the cities was a radical transformation of their fundamental structures. He argues the city was no longer based on the primary and secondary industrial sectors, but on the rising tertiary sector. It should be organized with a complex communication network instead of the Modernist separating functional zoning methods. Mobility should determine the city structure and he focuses on recent changes towards an automobile society where every family has the freedom to control its mode of transport. The introduction of individual car ownership changed the relation of the street with the surrounding architecture and the street could no longer be designed in the same way as in traditional cities.31 The spatial layout of Tange’s design was organized with a central spine carrying an elevated highway from the existing city towards the other side of the bay, located thirty kilometres away. This structure consisted of a series of interlocking loops starting in the historical city centre and reorganised it. The first loops on the sea would locate a new harbour and a civic centre. Subsequent loops would enclose offices and public buildings. A grid of 200 meters was integrated within the loops to organize the buildings and the secondary street system. Perpendicular highways were tapped from the central spine to be plugged into floating residential units. These A-frame megastructure units were similar to a previously created community with a population of 25.000 in the Boston bay area. They should operate as artificial land where residents could construct their own house. This is an example of how Tange translates the theory of longer lifecycles (the A-shape structures) and the shorter lifecycles (the individual residents, under the pressure of consumerist society) in his plans. Fumihiko Maki had serious concerns about this architectural translation of the theoretical framework he co-edited before. He commented that the main structure would soon be outdated. According to Maki, the megastructural approach was wrong and instead he proposed the Group form, which “permits the greatest efficiency and flexibility within the 30  Ibid, p. 76 31  Kenzo Tange Team, A plan for Tokyo, 1960: Toward a Structural Reorganization, Shinkenchikusha, March 1961, p. 6 [26]

Figure 21. Sketches of Peter Smithson describing the changing sides of the central spine and the mandatory detour in order to visit a neighbouring ‘street’.

smallest organizational structure” (Fumihiko Maki, 1964).32 In his design, Tange tried to replace the traditional two-dimensional planning method of zoning with a three-dimensional generative system. This antizoning strategy did not entirely match with his proposed central spine, where he clearly separates the places for offices, public facilities and residential quarters, in contradiction to his approach. His proposal tried to escape from the existing radial centripetal structure of Tokyo that he called ‘a closed structure’. He reformed the structure of the city into a linear structure, ‘an open structure’. The linear structure is the central axis, formed by a highway, and is the contrary of the CIAM concept of the ‘urban core’, where cities should be organized around urban elements such as plazas. Tange transforms this ‘civic core’ into his ‘civic axis’.33 In 1962, Peter Smithson writes a reflection about Tokyo Bay plan and expresses serious doubts about several elements of the proposed structure. He calls the proposal ‘centralized, absolutist and authoritarian’ and disagreed with the concept of Pivotal Cities. He argues this approach is too much controlling “the people’s modes of living and their concepts of life” (Peter Smithson, 1962). Another problem, he finds, is the linear transportation system that could never work efficiently, because all movements should happen via the central spine even when people don’t have business to do there. Residents who want to travel to a neighbouring structure, but located on another branch have to make a huge detour over the central spine in order to reach their destination. The A-shaped residential blocks with their gigantic dimensions contained basic design mistakes, for example as many residential plots without daylight. Smithson didn’t believe in this romantic vision of people who create their own dwelling in a megastructure. While he 32  Maki F., Investigations in Collective Form, Washington University press, 1964, p. 11 33  Tange K., “Recollections: Architect Kenzo Tange”, in The Japan Architect: international edition of Shinkenchiku, Vol. 340, 1985, p. 5-13

[27]

Figure 22. National Capital Redevelopment Plan launched in 1958 with the initial planned greenbelt.

supported the general planning concept since it was similar to the Archigram approach to the city, but he disagreed with the architectural translation.34 Tange’s plan was never realized and several factors caused its failure. First of all, Tange proposed his plan without any client or specific demand from the government. It was a reaction to the National Capital Redevelopment Plan launched in 1958 by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. This plan proposed a series of New Towns around the centre of Tokyo to absorb the population growth and economic expansion. In order to provide the city with a fresh surrounding, a greenbelt of ten kilometres wide was wrapped around the city. However, the industrial and urban sprawl grew far more quickly than expected and the restrictions stipulated by the plan became immediately outdated and were simply ignored. A revision of the plan in 1965 wiped out the entire greenbelt and made room for a zone of unlimited suburban growth. Tange didn’t agree with the proposed plan since the idea of satellite cities to decentralize the population would create even greater transport needs between the city centre and the sub-centres. His counter-proposal with a linear structure maintained the relationship between the different parts of the centre and allowed spontaneous mobility. 34  Smithson P., “Reflection on Kenzo Tange’s Tokyo Bay plan”, in Architectural Design, Vol. 34, 1964, p. 479-480 [28]

The megastructure approach proposed a plan that made no distinction between the scale of the city and the architecture, but this was overly simple since the city is much more complex compared to a building in terms of organization. The segregation of pedestrians and cars together with a hierarchical road system, could perhaps work (although it was heavily criticized by Smithson), but it was insufficiently flexible in view of anticipated changes. The massive infrastructure works would take many years and cost a fortune, before any profitable space could be installed. This would require an extremely powerful authority, even more so given the required land expropriations in the city centre. This would only have been possible with a totalitarian government. The strict hierarchy in the plan could only have been possible in a social organization of the same type, which is unrealistic and undemocratic. This was even in conflict with Tange’s ideology of supporting a society with equality and democracy. As a result, the idea of megastructures was never implemented on such large scale.35 Artificial islands built in Tokyo Bay 35  Lin Z., Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement. Urban Utopias of Modern Japan, Taylor and Francis, 2010, p. 165-166 Figure 23. Kenzo Tange at the cover of Shukan Asahi Magazine in 1964.

Figure 24. Kisho Kurokawa in the Japanese Playboy magazine in 1974.

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Koto Chuo Edogawa Urayasu

1 Minato

2

3

Shinagawa

4 5

Tokyo Bay Ota

Land Reclamation by Decade in 1900s

Kawasaki 0

1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s

1

2

3

Kilometers

Labels = Wards/Cities in 1995

Notes: Figure

25. Land reclamation in Tokyo Bay between 1910 and 2000.

Numbers show major “tiers” (and major decades) of island reclamation: 1 = 1910s, 2 = 1930s, 3 = 1960s, 4 = 1970s, 5 = 1980s/1990s Sources and Processing:

Tange announced his Tokyo Bay 1:50,000 Plantopographic for the first Digitized and interpreted from once-per-decade maps in 1900s. time on a 45-minute Color theme of LANDDEC field derived from LANDFIRST field of AREAHIST database. television show on the national channel NHK before it was published. This performance foreshadowed new where the society became involved Figure 2 Land Reclamation inaTokyo Bayera by Decade in 1900s in the discourse of planning and architecture. Several Metabolism architects were active on the forefront of the media. Kurokawa, for example, became Copyright  2001 Loren Siebert / GIS-based Visualization of Tokyo's Urban History 6 a symbol for fashionable young men and Tange performed as a trustworthy classic architect. Magazines, television shows and newspapers daily reported about the architects and in this way the idea of megastructures reached a very wide audience. Tange’s performance on TV together with the scientific underpinning about Tokyo’s growth and the plan drawn on a gigantic satellite photograph were quite impressive and probably influenced the future development of the city. During the years following the plan’s announcemnet, the construction of artificial islands in the bay accelerated, although not as systematically as [30]

Tange had proposed. The arguments for the land acquisition had changed too. The main driving force had become the economic need for new and big terrains for the expansion of the harbour and the heavy industry. The secondary economic sector was something Tange had not included in his plan. Between 1960 and 1985, a total of 172 km2 of land was reclaimed in the Tokyo Bay area. This reclamation is clearly visible on the map, and shows the need for extra land for the booming post-war industry and the modernization of the port, which had started container traffic and needed more storage space. The artificial islands were built of soil taken from the seabed or mainland, garbage and demolition waste of buildings and subway constructions. The materials were transported by barges to the site and dumped between prefabricated walls until the desired height was reached, typically between 15 and 20 meters above the seabed. The Tokyo Bay became one of the most densely industrialized areas in the world, producing around one quarter of the Japanese GNP in 1980.36 It is not possible to explain this extreme land acquisition only by the shortage of industrial land. Many other sites remained undeveloped while new islands were created. The island of Odaiba, for example, stayed fallow from the time it was created in 1971 until the Tokyo Teleport Town development took place in 1987. Meanwhile, neighbouring islands that were created in the eighties, are even today, A.D. 2012, not in use. In the 1970s, the industrial and port activities wiped out the last recreational facilities and fishing ports along the coast of Tokyo. This process reduced the public access to the waterfront and caused heavy air and water pollution. 37 Late 1980s: New waterfront developments and the ‘bubble economy’ The waterfront developments in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan drastically changed in the late 1980s. The heavy industry, which was depending on water proximity, declined and moved out of the bay. The creation of artificial islands almost stopped due to various factors. The tertiary economy of information, electronics and know-how boomed at the time and is called the

36  Bower B., Takao K., Who speaks for Tokyo Bay?, A.A. Balkema, 1993, p. 8-17 37  Malone P., Shiozaki Y., City, Capital and Water, Routledge, 1996, p. 158-159

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‘bubble economy’.38 This new economy urgently needed more office space and started to claim the abandoned artificial islands. The size of cargo vessels increased, which meant that the amount of piers dropped, and the remaining ones had to be modernized and oriented towards deeper water.39 The city centre of Tokyo itself still suffered from the same problems as in the 1960s: an overloaded transport system, urban congestion, pollution, fragmented land properties and incredibly high land prices. The proposed solutions to these problems were large marine projects that could be developed with the support of the proactive and liberal Metropolitan government. Right from the start of these projects, however, it was clear that the suburban islands would not solve the problems of the inner city, but would just please the powerful economic lobby seeking more land for office towers. During the 1980s, Tokyo lagged far behind other industrialized cities in qualitative waterfront planning. Almost no water was accessible to the public, hardly any parks were located next to the sea and there were no places nearby Tokyo for recreational boating or swimming. Tokyo had, and still has, one of the greatest concentrations of hotels, restaurants and shopping malls, but none oriented towards the water. Bourdier described the side effects of this evolution in his book as “The majority of the inhabitants of Tokyo don’t consider and don’t feel they are living in a harbour city next to the sea.” (Bourdier, 1992)40 The general interest in waterfront development with leisure and recreation facilities grew over the world during the 1980s. Examples are the London docklands and the coast development in Barcelona. After the oil crisis in 1973, the Japanese economy slowed down and the Tokyoites became concerned about environmental issues and public space. The increasing income per capita and leisure time raised the demand for recreational areas. Citizens asked for more and natural public amenities to become familiar again with the coastal water, instead of the existing concrete jungle blocking the waterfront. New projects of the bubble economy responded to this demand and implemented various public areas in their waterfront designs. The Sumida River became less polluted and its banks revived as a gathering place while some of the high concrete walls were replaced with a gentle slope. Many high-rise residential buildings were constructed along the Sumida River to the ocean shore, integrating pedestrian walks 38  The Japanese ‘bubble economy’ happened between 1985 and 1991 in which real estate and stock prices were greatly inflated. When the bubble busted, the Japanese stock market went down and the real estate prices returned to normal. 39  Bower B., Takao K., Who speaks for Tokyo Bay?, A.A. Balkema, 1993, p. 8-17 40  Bourdier M., “Tôkyô sur mer ou le devenir de la zone portuaire le la métropole niponne”, in Les annals de la Recherche Urbaine, Vol. 55-56, 1993, p. 171-181 [32]

Figure 26.Coastal City of Tokyo by Kenzo Tange.

along the water. The old and abandoned warehouses along the waterfront attracted artists and designers and a ‘loft culture’ emerged in Tokyo with bars, restaurants, cafes, discos and alternative shops in the former industrial facilities. The most important factor of change were the developments driven by the bubble economy, in search of more office space. These ambitious projects replaced derelict warehouses, former industrial zones and the area of the loft culture, which was short-lived. More than 40 mega-projects were set up in the late 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s in the Tokyo Bay area. These projects proposed more land reclamation, large-scale infrastructure, up-to-date technology and impressive architecture. Some of them would be connected to the existing city and some proposed autonomous city districts or even new city centres, such as Tokyo Teleport Town.41 The overall aim was to create an attractive environment for the 21th century in order to house international businesses related to communication, technology and information. Tokaido, the area between Tokyo and Oasaka, and including 41 ������������ Jinnai H., Public Places in Asia Pacific Cities. Current Issues and Strategies, Kluwer, 2001, p. 49-70

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Figure 27. Zone No. 13 development plan by Kenzo Tange in 1987. The many similarities with the later developed Tokyo Teleport Town are highlighted.

the two cities, can be seen as a megalopolis. This region accommodates 40% of Japan’s population and is interlinked by the Shinkansen (high speed train). Jean Gottman invented the term ‘megalopolis’ in his 1961 book when he described the dense urban agglomeration in the northeast of the United States.42 The mega-projects during the 1990s in Tokyo Bay were probably influenced by the megastructures proposed in the 1960s. However, different from the proposed plans of the Metabolists, the 1990s projects did not use the megaform in terms of planning. It seems there has been a remarkable evolution in urban planning between the concepts of the 1960s and the projects developed in the 1990s. But there are similarities between them as well, for example the ambition to create ‘total environments’ envisioning the ‘perfect city’ or ‘ideal place’. Also, the underlying reasons for the development of the bay are similar, since they are rooted in a desire to move out of the city centre because of urban problems. In which way did the mega-projects of the 1960s movement influence the mega-projects during the 1990s? And can these similarities be found back in the realizations?43 42  Gottmann, J., Megapolis: The Urbanized Northesern Seabord of an Urban Giant, G.K.Hall & Co, 1961 43  Cybriwsky R., Tokyo. The Changing Profile of an Urban Giant, G.K. Hall, 1991, p. 211224 [34]

In 1986, the then ruling Liberal Democratic Party proposed a plan to guide the future urban developments of Tokyo. The so-called Amano proposal was more a product of economic and political ambitions than urban planning objectives.44,45 The plan contained three potential development sites in Tokyo, for a total of 427 hectares of land, including the Tokyo station area, the grounds of the former Shiodome freight station and the Odaiba islands in Tokyo Bay. The proposal provided a framework for development activities. It launched a call to interested private partners to invest in the waterfront zone. The Amano proposal was the first step in the development of the Tokyo Teleport Town, proposed on two islands that were created but had never been used at the time. Probably inspired by the political interest for the waterfront developments, Kenzo Tange proposed his Plan for Tokyo 1986 at the end of 1987 in the Japan Architect magazine. He expresses an urgent need for the creation of The Coastal City of Tokyo in order to structure future developments for the communication and information economy. The Coastal City of Tokyo would develop 2000 hectares on existing and future artificial islands. Tange refers to his previous Tokyo Bay Plan 1960 and argues: “No overall plan has been realized because, in this field, none of these government agencies acts with true responsibility. … Obviously, Tokyo has formed as a result of totally planless spontaneous growth on the basis of the self-assertion of inhabitants. It is irritating to observe how lack of leadership on the part of the governments has contributed to this situation” (Kenzo Tange, 1987).46 Tange argues that the current transportation system is unsuitable for the city as a transmitter of information. The city centre is mainly focused on offices and retail while hardly anyone is living here, so businessmen have to travel one hour and a half from their home in the suburbs to their job. Compared to the commuting time of an average of 30 minutes in Paris or New York, Tokyo has a major problem since this time is not economically or socially valuable. In Tokyo, the city looses the interrelation with the suburban residential areas and social life is generally limited to drinking with colleagues before returning home. The monotonicity of the centre is mainly caused by the excessive price of land. Tange feared that the price of land would ultimately put Tokyo in isolation since foreign countries will avoid the city to start new businesses. 44  The Amano proposal was named after M. Amano, a politician of the Liberal Democratic Party. 45  Malone P., Shiozaki Y., City, Capital and Water, Routledge, 1996, p. 172 46  Tange K., “A Plan for Tokyo 1986”, in Japan Architect, Vol. 367/368, 1987, p. 8-37

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Places such as Hong Kong, Singapore or Shanghai would be alternative locations and take over the dominant position of Tokyo in Asia. The solution for this threat should be a responsible government who freezes the land price and develops new land to attract foreign companies.47 From 1985 until 1991, the Japanese bubble economy caused euphoria and dozens of new developments started to provide enough office space for the new information-oriented business. These great demand for office space was the main raison for the TMG to propose the Amano plan. Many developments were set up along the waterfront and changed this zone from an industrial area to technology islands with offices and leisure facilities. The sky was the limit and the government invested in infrastructure to make the land ready to build for private investors. However, at the end of 1991, the bubble economy burst and real estate prices returned to normal.48 This caused a chain reaction and all projects slowed down or even halted because most private investors wanted to withdraw from the waterfront developments in fear of bankruptcy. To counter this, the government had to renegotiate the contracts with the developers and suffered from much lower income compared to the initial expectations. The strict building rules were revised too and developers were allowed to build higher, as a compensation for falling rents.

3. Introduction to Case Studies: Tokyo Teleport Town and Minato Mirai 21 Out of many projects started in the late 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, two case studies will be presented, one about Tokyo Teleport Town and the other about the Minato Mirai 21 development in Yokohama. The two selected projects have similarities and dissimilarities as concerns their approach, layout, outcome and scale. Both are located in the Tokyo Bay area and are coordinated by the local government of the respective region. Tokyo Teleport Town was intended to become a new town on two artificial islands close to the centre of Tokyo and directed and fully planned by the TMG. The project was probably the most widely discussed development in Tokyo during the 1990s, when this flagship of the city faced major problems due to the economic decline. In 1995 it even became an important topic during 47  Ibid 48  Hidenobu J., Tokyo. A spatial Anthropology, University of California Press, 1995, p. 217220 [36]

Figure 28. Location of the Case Studies.

Tokyo Teleport Town

Minato Mirai 21

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the elections of the new governor.49 At the time, Tokyo Teleport Town was proposed by the TMG as the ideal example for waterfront redevelopments of brownfield zones. Its concept contrasted sharply with the mother city. Walking around on the islands is disorientating and gives one the impression of being in another place, especially not Tokyo. The surrealistic shopping and leisure atmosphere strengthens this feeling and the vacant plots on the islands clearly show the atypical evolution of the development. The islands are badly connected to the city and are surrounded by industry. They are facing Tokyo, but one feels remote from Tokyo. Minato Mirai 21 in Yokohama is a similar waterfront development, started some years earlier than Tokyo Teleport Town. The waterfront of Yokohama presents itself as a cultural melting pot, with active shopping and office facilities nearby the water. While Tokyo Teleport Town often has a negative 49  Malone P., Shiozaki Y., City, Capital and Water, Routledge, 1996, p. 188-190

Figure 29. birdview of the masterplan in 1990 with the pedestrian axes highlighted.

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connotation, Minato Mirai 21 is generally perceived as a good example. However, the goals for both projects were very similar with a main focus on profitable office buildings in the proximity of the water. How did the development in Minato Mirai 21 better susvive the crisis? And what are the differences and similarities between the planning approaches and their execution? In a nutshell, the partial focus on culture, a better integration within the city and the willingness to modify the objectives as time evolved contributed to the comparative success of Minato Mirai 21. The chief planner of Minato Mirai 21 was Masato Otaka, one of the founding members of the Metabolism group. Kenzo Tange participated in the project too. How did the earlier futuristic ideas of Metabolism influence this waterfront development? And how daring were the plans during the 1980s?

4. Tokyo Teleport Town An antithesis of the mother city Driven by the bubble economy and the Amano plan, the TMG started in 1987 with the construction of Tokyo Teleport Town (also called the Tokyo Waterfront Subcentre) on two neighbouring and derelict artificial islands close to the city. The plan included 448 hectares and promised to be a hightech, international neighbourhood for the 21st century. Including 106,000 jobs and 63,000 residents, the islands would become a new sub-centre of the city, providing work, housing and leisure. The plan was one of the biggest urban developments ever organized by the TMG and combined the governmental urban planning with the interest of private investors to construct the buildings. This was made possible by long-term land lease contracts. The economic crash in 1991 slowed down the process considerably. Earlier arguments such as the urgent need for new office space were suddenly not valid anymore. Nevertheless, the TMG did not change their strategy and continued developing new infrastructure while facing massive losses since many private investors withdrew from the project. Now, more than 20 years later, the developments still go on but many plots are still vacant.50 Tokyo Teleport Town is completely different from with rest of Tokyo. Examining the plans and initial renderings of Tokyo Teleport Town or walking around 50  Ibid. p. 172 [39]

Exhibition- and sport facilities

Commercial Leisure, hotels, exhibition- and sport facilities Offices Housing Derelict plots Pedestrian promenade Park zone

Subway line Monorail line Station Highway Pedestrian deck

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Figure 30. Tokyo Teleport Town zoning map of 1990

Figure 31. Tokyo Teleport Town realisation anno 2012

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the islands, one feels completely disconnected from the original city. The place is an antithesis of the mother city, in terms how it deals with public space, greenery, water, the separation of traffic flows, road design, spatial concepts etcetera. This is striking and the planners should have been aware they were creating a place essentially opposite to the existing city centre. This suggests that the planners did not see a future in the existing city with all its problems and tried to escape from it with a radically different planning. Based on the plans of Tokyo Teleport Town, it is quite possible to imagine the attitude of the planners towards Tokyo. This could clarify their design strategies, in the zeitgeist of economic progression and the changes of the 1980s. This chapter will, on the one hand, explain the spatial layout of Tokyo Teleport Town, how it is constructed and how it works. On the other hand, by analysing the antithesis so created, it tries to find out how the planners thought about the mother city and what they wanted to change. Three main questions will guide this analysis: -

- -

How did they, particularly the competent planners and policy-makers, read the original city of Tokyo and what were, according to them, the main obstructions for a temporary urban environment, ready to be competitive in the 21st century? How did the planners react towards these obstructions and how did they solve them through the design of Tokyo Teleport Town? If we analyse the sub-centre twenty years later, did the proposed solutions work out and how did they survive with the passage of time?

In order to structure the reflection, four main topics are chosen that should cover almost the entire design of Tokyo Teleport Town and the vision of the planners on the then existing city. A. Structured spatial layout and coordinated planning B. Public domain and accessibility of the sea C. Unbiased approach towards all transportation modes D. An example for Tokyo and Tokyo’s flagship to the world It is impossible, as an foreign researcher and without knowledge of the Japanese language and given the short time available, to found my research on original documents of the planning, meeting reports and discussions between the planners and policy-makers of the 1980s. My conclusions are based on an analysis of the plans, research papers, visits on site and written documents expressing the views of architects and planners on the city of Tokyo at that time. It is not my aim to find out the exact vision of the [42]

Figure 32. Lifted highways in the centre of Tokyo using the last available space.

planners about Tokyo but, rather, by examining the alleged malfunctioning of the mother city, to find answers to the question why they made their design choices. Structured spatial layout and coordinated planning “Tokyo has formed as a result of totally planless spontaneous growth.” (Kenzo Tange, 1987) The writer Hal Porter describes the situation of Tokyo at the end of the 1960s as: “Makeshift and confused, a freak weed sprung from a crack in history, and drenched by fertilizer that makes it monstrous but not mighty, immense but immoral, overgrown and under civilized” (Hal Porter, 1968). Tokyo grew enormously after the Second World War, without a strict planning policy, which resulted in wild growth. It was almost impossible to buy enough land for big infrastructure works and the elevated highways of the 1960s were constructed in narrow free spaces, over waterways, existing roads and even buildings. Shelton describes Tokyo as “a cloud-like image in constant flux- shifting, decentred, incomplete and forever reforming.” (Barry Shelton, [43]

1999)51 The missed opportunities after the Kanto earthquake and the Second World War show a lack of governmental power. The land got more and more fragmented due to the high inheritance tax, because the heirs often have to sell part of the inherited land in order to pay this tax. The government’s planning policy is primarily meant to maintain the city structure and to prevent dangerous situations and drawbacks caused by new constructions. Even with this low-profile policy, gigantic apartment towers arise such as the Atlas Tower in Nakameguro, built in 2009 with a height of 165 meters in a relatively flat neighbourhood with average heights of four-story buildings. Total planning of the Teleport The policy-makers and planners were probably tired of the existing urban situation and wanted to come up with a powerful plan, where the government took the full initiative. Apparently, they wanted to transform Tokyo into a polycentric city, with Tokyo Teleport Town as one of the centres, focused on 51  Shelton B., Learning from the Japanese city. West meets East in urban design, Routledge, 1999, p. 180 Figure 33. Rendering of the future crossing of the two promenades.

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international business and the communication sector.52 The structural framework consists of two promenades designed as a linear park. These two axes cross each other in the centre and should define the building plots. Four different districts were so planned, each with its own identity. The Aomi district would be the most important one and was designated as a business and commercial area, housing the telecommunication centre and international businesses in ‘intelligent’ buildings, operating as a ‘24-hours city within a city’. Ariake South district would become the international convention park, where big conferences and expositions could be organized. Ariaka North district should house 40,000 residents in high-rise apartment towers together with a commercial and recreational area. Daiba district would house a waterfront park and water-based leisure facilities.53 This all together shows a total-planning intention, with everything scheduled in advance and organized in a strict hierarchical way. The TMG realized that they could not decide on the design of the buildings since private investors would construct them. To counter this, they tried to make a strict master plan with strict regulations about building height, functions and responsibilities. The land between the individual projects was used to ensure coherence and structure the global development and to give it the qualities of good urban design and social value. The strength of the project should be found in this public space, which the planners tried to keep well-organized (by using straight streets to create vistas) and clean, for example by putting the electricity wires underground, which elsewhere in Tokyo is not the case. Inflexibility and economic power The axes would become the core of the spatial layout designed as an incredibly wide walking promenade. The renderings indicate a width of these boulevard of 90 meters, as if they had to serve for cars. All the adjacent buildings should have been oriented towards the promenades, but the few realized projects have their entrances on the other side, facing the street. After the burst of the bubble economy, the entire project slowed down, but especially the building plots next to the axes failed to attract developers. Facing this lack of investment, the TMG decided to reduce infrastructure costs and postponed the creation of the axes. Hence, the core of the plan was not implemented until very recently. This shows the discrepancy between 52  Nguyen M., “Daiba: un modèle urbain pour la baie de Tôkyô”, in Ebisu, Vol. 34, 2005, p. 210 53  Office of Tokyo Frontier Promotion, Tokyo Teleport Town, TGM, 1992

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daytime population nighttime population

Figure 34. Difference in daytime population and nighttime population.

the officially proposed plan, with the public domain as a key feature, and its actual execution. The plan was obviously influenced by Modernism principles, combined with a Beaux-arts approach, which had been popular in the 1960s for city development but was not used anymore in 1980s waterfront developments such as the London Docklands. This suggests the applied planning strategy was already outdated right from the start. The total-planning approach made it difficult to react to changing circumstances such as the collapse of the bubble economy and the associated declining demand for office space. The TMG continued with the construction of infrastructure and tried to attract businesses by lowering the rent prices for land by 36% and changing the building rules so investors could modify the building height, density and program. This was detrimental to the quality of the designed buildings since the developers also changed their purposes to shopping malls and offices. These were more profitable than housing, which had to be 65% public housing at a minimum. This change made the four centres, originally intended to have their own identity each, nothing more than a merchandising story.54 The bubble economy burst was a huge blow to the project. The last decade of the 20th century in Japan is called ‘the lost decade’, indicating the impact of the economic recession. The rigid planning of the Tokyo Teleport Town was fully based on economic success and a rising demand for office space. It made the project mono-targeted, relying on a single core business, which is always highly risky. 54  Malone P., Shiozaki Y., City, Capital and Water, Routledge, 1996 [46]

Housing shortage is another source of conflict that should be highlighted. Since the end of the Second World War, Tokyo had been suffering from a shortage of good-quality dwellings and a reduction of residences in the centre of the city, due to the expanding CBD. The waterfront developments were an opportunity to tackle this problem, but the housing shortage did not have a substantial influence on the plans for the sub-centre. The original plans promised 20,000 dwellings, for 64,000 inhabitants, which was much less than to the 106,000 permanent jobs scheduled. The extra commuting flow thus generated shows that the sub-centre would not function on its own, in contrast to the proposed ‘city within a city’ concept. The reality is even more striking since in 2005 only 4,890 people lived on the islands, compared to 32,395 jobs, which makes the islands a lifeless place after the businessmen leave it in the evening.55 Most of the island inhabitants live in the North, in the L-shaped zone where a couple of apartment blocks of 14 to 32 levels are grouped overviewing the water. Daily life without commuting to central Tokyo is almost impossible since the islands do not provide the necessary facilities; for example, there is only one supermarket. Public domain and accessibility of the sea Tradition of the public domain in Japan 55  Nguyen M., “Daiba: un modèle urbain pour la baie de Tôkyô”, in Ebisu, Vol. 34, 2005 Figure 35. Difference between European public spaces and Japanese public spaces.

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Figure 36. Green coastline

According to many Westerners, Japanese cities lack public domain such as civic space, squares, parks, sidewalks and vistas within the city. These physical elements are the backbone of European cities and without them, Europeans feel disorientated and confused within the urban fabric. A common reaction among Westerners is to despise Japanese cities and to criticize them as less urban, even if they are more lively and dense than European cities. While learning and studying Western urban planning principles, Japanese architects and planners are often affected by these views and perceive their own cities as less valuable when compared to European cities. Sudjic Deyanfor, for example, describes that his country has yet to evolve a convincing urban archetype and argues that Japanese cities are meanderings of overgrown village lanes. 56, 57 During the Edo period, the city of Tokyo was orientated towards the water and the transportation, trading and social life happened along the water routes. The bridges and their environment were the connecting points in the 56  Shelton B., Learning from the Japanese city. West meets East in urban design, Routledge, 1999, p. 9 57  Sudjic D., Isozaki gets the Wagons in a Circle, Blueprint, Vol. 59, p. 16 [48]

city, with vistas and a sense of openness. These places around the bridges fulfilled the role of the public spaces in the city and were a meeting place, equivalent to the European squares. When the use of waterways declined, the importance of the bridges as public nods disappeared and the city was left with just a few public spaces in the European sense. The total area of urban parks and ‘green’ open spaces in Tokyo in 1994 amounted to 4.8m2 per inhabitant. This was almost half the standard of 10m2 per person as set down by Japanese legislation as the target for the year 2000. This meant that the Japanese government was legally bound to raise the amount of open space in the city, which was very difficult with the raising land prices and the increasing population.58 Until the 1950s, the Tokyo Bay area was a major recreation area for the citizens, who visited it during the summer to bath and swim. Shellfish and seaweed were gathered from its tidal flats and people fished throughout the year. This changed in the 1960s with the rapid industrialization of the city along the waterside. The entire coastline became occupied by industry and port facilities as a result of land reclamation. This process continued until the late 1980s and by that time Tokyo was far behind other world cities in terms of waterfront development for recreational and touristic purposes.59 Green public domain as a highlighted planning objective The planners of the Tokyo Teleport Town followed the Western vision on public space, squares, parks and vistas by highlighting these values in their design. Of the total surface of the project, 26% was designated to become landscaped parks, in order to create a ‘human place’ set in a landscape of land and water. Two types of greenery were planned. One was to establish an access to the water, following almost the entire coastline of the islands. The other one was the creation of linear landscape axes (cf. supra). Critics argued the TMG should have developed the entire islands as parklands instead of designing them mainly for commercial goals and just using the ‘green’ aspect as a merchandising tool. This radical opinion can be understood given the low area of parkland in Tokyo and the necessity to meet the criterion of 10m2 of green space per person set by the government. Tajiri made a counterproposal with his Harbour Park of 28 km2, integrating all the artificial islands in the proximity of Tokyo. This could, according to him, restore the balance between city and parkland.60 58  Malone P., Shiozaki Y., City, Capital and Water, Routledge, 1996, p. 178-179 59  Chen J. et al., Engineered Coasts, Kluwer Acamemic Publishers, 2002, p. 96-97 60  Malone P., Shiozaki Y., City, Capital and Water, Routledge, 1996, p. 178-179

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The initial intention of TMG to reserve one fourth of the land to park space was courageous, if one considers the high land prices and the associated potential loss. The biggest park is located in the northwest corner of the islands and is a popular place in summertime but it misses the connection with the central axes of the island. The park continues into a beach, located at the foot of the rainbow bridge, connecting to Tokyo. This is the closest public access for the citizens of Tokyo to the sea, but the downside of the location is the constant noise and close proximity of cars on the bridge. Walking on the islands anno 2012 gives the impression that there is perhaps even too much parkland. The buildings on the island, with heights between 45 and 120 meters, are controversial as they are not on the human scale that was originally envisioned. The nature and parks are never cosy because they are overshadowed by the tall buildings. Except for the parks next to the coast and the double axes, the other greenery (presented on the advertisement renderings) is strictly private. Its only role is to create a necessary offset between the street and the buildings and it blocks the connection between the buildings. Rendering and aerial pictures suggest a huge connectivity between the offices, but in fact the buildings and the privatized nature act as a continuous wall. Greenery is just used as a backfilling without spatial qualities. Unbiased approach towards all transportation modes Transport inequality in Tokyo The organic growth of the city, with the spatial layout from the Edo period, created difficulties when more and more cars appeared during the 1960s. Most of the secondary streets were too small in to allow for sidewalks, which resulted in conflicting situations between automobiles and pedestrians. A single painted line suggests the space reserved for pedestrians. However, this space is also shared with cars, bikes, poles and streetlights. The congested roads and air pollution were hot topics during the 1980s, when the TMG tried to counter this by limiting exhaust gasses.61 Nevertheless, the fundamental problem of car dominance on roads remained and was even strengthened, for example by the construction of pedestrian bridges over crossings. These crossings give absolute priority to cars to continue their track while pedestrians have to cross this boundary by taking the stairs and 61  Sorensen A., Okata J., Megacities. Urban Form, Governance and Sustainability, Springer, 2011, p. 34-35 [50]

deviate from their path. Bikes are entirely ignored in this situation since they cannot cross by using the pedestrian bridges and have to intervene in the dangerous traffic. The narrow sidewalks are often too small on busy places such as Shibuya. Pedestrian zones were non-existent in the 1980s in Tokyo. Segregation of traffic flows The reaction to this uneven situation by the planners of the Waterfront Suburb was not to disadvantage car drivers, but to make equivalent systems for car drivers, pedestrians and users of public transport. The general approach was a segregation of traffic flows, according to Modernistic principles. Pedestrians were highlighted in the planning of the parkland axes, which had to become vibrant shopping and leisure areas. In the northern district Odaiba, the promenade changes to a pedestrian deck that should give access to all buildings in this district. The official entrances of these developments would be accessible from the pedestrian deck instead of from street level. An example of this is the Fuji television building, designed by Tange, which connects to the pedestrian deck through a long, monumental staircase. In addition to the axes and the pedestrian deck, all streets in the development

Figure 37. Nearly finished central promenade with adjacent vacant plots.

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Figure 38. Pedestrian deck changing the proximity of the sea and leaves the street underutilised. Figure 39. The crossing highway splits the islands in two parts.

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have sidewalks of up to five meters wide. On the other hand, the grid of wide roads, giving access to all buildings, made it very comfortable for car drivers as well. A new public transport line was built to serve the islands and runs elevated above the streets. The pedestrian axes are now almost finished. The original design underwent some drastic changes towards a green park concept instead of a boulevard. The axes were the officially announced core of the project, and should serve as shopping and leisure streets. Reality, however, is different and the few buildings are not orientated towards the axes and are only offices instead of shops or leisure facilities. People commute to the Teleport town to go to the office or to shop in the malls. They get out of the train close to their destination and so don’t make use of the pedestrian axes. As a result, these are just fake promenades, while the real pedestrian flows are within the shopping malls, such as Venus Fort. This gigantic shopping mall created an inner street pattern with sky-painted ceilings and fake historical facades mimicking an old Roman city. The artificial internal environment completely ignores its location on the island, the surrounding and the waterfront qualities. It attracts all attention of the shopping-sick visitors of the islands and leaves the streets and parks empty. The pedestrian deck in the north connects a few shopping malls and the beach, so it is used more intensively compared to the central axes. It creates a swarm of pedestrians who are free to move without being interrupted by cars. The biggest problem is situated at the edges of the deck, where it is disconnected from the ground level and the beach. Since the buildings have their entrances on the level of the deck, the street underneath is facing the dead wall of the shopping malls. These streets have wide sidewalks but these are never used. Private investors had to connect their buildings to the deck, but these junctions are often done sloppily. The segregation of traffic flows was a purely Modernistic concept and turned out not to work well in many instances due to problems on the edges, the disconnection from the ground level and the decline of social control. The four districts are suffering from an immense disconnection between each other. This is caused by the separating highway of 80 meters wide, which crosses both islands. Between Odaiba and Aomi there are only two pedestrian bridges crossing this boundary. The highway is also very noisy and the noise can be heard almost everywhere on the islands. It is remarkable that the highway has not been put underground since it already arrives in a tunnel from underneath the water. [53]

Tokyo Teleport Town

Figure 40. A diagram of the planned telecommunication network.

An example for Tokyo and Tokyo’s flagship to the world Teleport developments The construction of Tokyo Teleport Town fits in the global trend of teleport developments during the 1980s. Teleports were based on satellite links associated with property development and linked to local and global telecommunication networks. In theory, they should act as nodes for national and international telecommunication services and were implemented in cities or nearby cities. Teleports were targeted to the specific needs of a local key economy and employed the development as a catalyst to enforce and expand it. Innovative communication infrastructure was a hot topic during that time, partly caused by a survey of 500 leading European companies that indicated ‘the quality of communication’ as the second most important factor behind ‘easy access to markets, customers and clients’.62 Governments used the teleport strategy to improve the economic 62  Graham S., Marvin S., Telecommunications and the city. Electronic spaces, urban spaces, Routledge, 1996, p. 349 [54]

competiveness of cities, whether its economy was in decline or not. There was a certain fear that a city would be excluded from the global teleport network in the future. This fear was fuelled by the lobby of the World Teleport Association and others who predicted that the world would be divided in two groups of cities by 1995; developed cities connected to the network and underdeveloped cities that stayed unconnected.63 Critics of this theory claimed that this kind of urban regeneration with the public-private partnerships would result in high-rise office towers, convention centres and cultural mega-places, while ignoring the basic needs of the city residents. Another argument was that declining industrial cities used the teleport facilities (being integrated in the global telecommunication network) often as a merely symbolic rather than a substantive tool.64 The worldwide access to the Internet soon outdated the teleport strategy in the 1990s. Driven by the philosophy of the teleports, Tokyo Teleport Town was planned by the TMG in order to create a place where businesses could be grouped and at the same time be connected to the outside world within the teleport network. The TMG tried to support and expand the information, banking and knowledge industry on the islands. The islands became a test bed for new technologies and urban principles. The previously mentioned separation of transport modes was introduced together with a total planning, led by the government. Electric cables were put underground, all buildings were to be connected to the optical fibre network, piped refuse collection was installed and collective air conditioning was planned. When finished, the neighbourhood would become an example for other developments in Tokyo on how the city should evolve. The sub-centre should become the flagship of Tokyo. An international exhibition ‘The World City Expo’ was scheduled but was finally cancelled due to the economic decline and the delayed development. The planning strategy did not to turn out to be very progressive and also the applied technologies were not as innovative as expected. The economic recession of the 1990s almost brought the developments to a halt. Today, less than half of the planned constructions have been realized. Ashihara argues that Tokyo has a certain capacity to renew itself, driven by market forces.65 Tokyo Teleport Town is lacking this capacity due to its strict planning, 63  Hasagawa F., Tokyo : A highly information-oriented city, The Technopolis Phenomenon, 1990 64  Graham S., Marvin S., Telecommunications and the city. Electronic spaces, urban spaces, Routledge, 1996, p. 350-352 65  Ashihara Y., L’ordre caché, Tôkyô, la ville XXIe siècle?, Hazan, 1994

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organization and regulations. A second remark is about the average lifecycle of a building in Tokyo, which is 30 years. The buildings created in the 1990s are already halfway their lifecycle. Rebuilding after 30 years will be very difficult if there are still vacant plots, which will be cheaper to develop. This problem of outdated buildings, together with undeveloped plots, suggests a revision of the entire urban master plan will necessary.

4. Minato Mirai 21 “We can envision a Hong Kong-like city centre with a unique atmosphere that is open 24 hours a day.” 66 A development similar to Tokyo Teleport Town started in the early 1980s at the waterfront of Yokohama, a neighbouring city of Tokyo. The project was named ‘Minato Mirai 21’67 and was set up by the local government to strengthen its independent position and to decentralize businesses away from Tokyo. It had to become an international cultural centre operating around the clock, an information city, and a human environment surrounded by greenery, water and history.68 The site is located between the two separated districts of the 66 ��������������������������������������� Yokohama Minato Mirai 21 corporation, Yokohama Minato Mirai 21: A city of Creative Experimentation, 2002 67  ‘Minato Mirai’ means: ‘the future port city of the 21st century’ 68 �������������������������������� Yokohama Municipal Government, City planning in Yokohama, 1989 Figure 41.Yokohama Waterfront in 1977.

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1988

city of Yokohama, the historical Kannai-Isezakicho and the newer post-war centre around Yokohama station. The Minato Mirai 21 (MM21) was part of the Yokohama City Centre Plan Concept Proposal made in 1964, and the site at that time was an industrial zone exploited by Mitsubishi industries. The municipal government bought the land in the late 1970s and started a gigantic brownfield redevelopment and additional land reclamation in 1981. Yokohama had been the main port and industry base in Japan since the modernization at the end of the 19th century. The industry boomed during the country’s economic growth after the Second World War, transforming the city into a huge suburban town of Tokyo. In the post-industrial era, the region had to restructure radically since the industrial backbone was in decline. The new waterfront development of 188 hectares had to connect the two isolated districts of the city and respond to the rising demand for office space. The Minato Mirai 21 project is interesting because, unlike Tokyo Teleport Town, it is perceived as the most successful example of all mega-projects started in the 1980s in the Tokyo Bay Area.69 Following similar strategies and aims as the Tokyo Teleport Town project, several questions arise. What were the reasons for its (relative) success? Where does it differ in terms of urban layout, connection with the water and how did it cope with the later economic decline? 69 ������������� Lin ������������ Z.-J., “From Megastructure to Megalopolis: Formation and Transformation of Megaprojects in Tokyo Bay”, in Journal of Urban Design, Vol.12, 2007, p. 80 2003

2010

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New city centre after WW2

Yokohama station

King’s axis (undeveloped) residential area

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sta

ax is

Housing

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all dM

an

Leisure, hotels, exhibition - and sport facilities Offices

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xis

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Mixed use (office; hotel; commercial Derelict plots

Underused plots

Pedestrian promenade Park zone Subway line Railway line Station Highway

original city centre

Pedestrian deck

500m

Figure 42. Minato Mirai 21 in Yokohama anno 2012. Figure 43. Model of the initial 1981-plan.

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Figure 44. Section of the Central Station.

Similarities between Minato Mirai 21 and Tokyo Teleport Town Total planning with pedestrian axes, a city grid and separation of traffic flows Like Tokyo Teleport Town, the Minato Mirai 21 project intended to use pedestrian boulevards as the backbone of the site. The district has three urban axes, King’s axis, Queen’s axis and the Grand Mall axis, which had to link the site with the existing centres and railway stations. King’s axis and Queen’s axis start from the Yokohama railway station and the Sakuragicho station, respectively, while the Grand Mall axis intersects these two axes. The axes serve as linear open spaces and vistas. Each one has its own character and was built at the same time as the surrounding buildings. Queen’s axis serves as a commercial boulevard, crosses several inner malls. It was the first to be developed, with the explicit goal of maximising the economic impact. The boulevards and grid structure break radically with the organic structure of the existing city. Traffic flows are separated by the boulevards for the pedestrians and a grid system for motorized traffic. Queen’s axis is elevated as a pedestrian deck, crossing the streets below. Economic benefits instead of balanced neighbourhoods The promotional pamphlet of the development promises a combination of 24-hours commercial and office spaces on a human scale that should become a pleasant space to live and work. The imbalance between the proposed 10,000 residents and 190,000 jobs is manifestly a downside of the project. In addition to this imbalance, the MM21 Corporation, the organization in charge of the planning and development, was always very ambivalent towards public housing. Given the small number of residences, it is hardly surprising that they were only affordable for a small economic elite. This planned imbalance between working and living creates big traffic flows of commuters every day. After work, just a few people walk along the waterfront, which is in disagreement with one of the project goals to reconnect the city with the water. Because the project was a private-public partnership, the government was relying on many private stakeholders to make the project a success. Once the private investors were on board, they had a large impact on the content of the master plan. The initial social goals of the government were heavily tempered by the economic rationales. The project in fact changed from a beautiful waterfront for residents to an environment dominated by

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Figure 45. Pedestrian deck at the end of Queens’s axis.

concerns for investment and growth.70 Isolated from the surroundings Unlike Tokyo Teleport Town, which is isolated from its surroundings, MM21 looks different and the aim of the pedestrian axes was to connect the existing urban structure with the new development. MM21 sought to break the hard boundary of the railway and the highway in between the two districts. In reality, the hard edges between the MM21 on the one hand, and the old city fabric and the waterfront on the other hand, remained intact because the promenades are nearly dead-ended on both sides. Queen’s axis, for example, changes angle to connect with the Sakuragicho station and runs through indoor shopping malls. Due to this, the initially proposed vistas do not exist and the intersection of buildings causes a perception of disconnectedness. At the waterside of the axis, a building bars the view towards the water. King’s axis should connect the new district around Yokohama station but has not been developed yet, which causes a similar disconnection towards the north. 70 �������������������������������� Hee L., Viray E., Tajudeen I., The Yokohama MM21 model as Post-Industrial Waterfront, 2008, p. 3 [60]

Failures in connecting the city with the water MM21 physically connects the city to the water by opening a formerly industrial zone, but does not really succeed in bringing the water atmosphere into the neighbourhood. The new waterfront is not closely related to the city facilities and lacks the connectivity and spatial continuity compared to the old, preindustrial Yokohama waterfront. The intention was that “a person could feel the sea and port nearby from anywhere in the town,”71 but failed. Also in the new district, the relation to the water is ambiguous. The main circulation through the retail malls instead of along the waterfront attracts activity to the inside of the malls, while the proximity of the water is neglected. But even worse, the shopping malls do not seem to attract large crowds from the old city centres. The Rinko Park is the biggest public greenery in the area and interacts directly with the water by well-organized public space. Unfortunately though, the park should be the end of King’s axis, which is not developed yet, so it remains unconnected to the other public domains so far.

71 ��������������������������������������� Yokohama Minato Mirai 21 corporation, Yokohama Minato Mirai 21: A city of Creative Experimentation, 2002

Figure 46. Undeveloped land in the heart of the district.

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Dissimilarities between Minato Mirai 21 and Tokyo Teleport Town Response to the economic decline Tokyo Teleport Town and MM21 both experienced the collapse of the bubble economy while the developments were still in their infancy. The key driving force of both developments, in particular the urgent need of office space together with increasing land prices, vanished, which caused a slowdown of the constructions. MM21 started seven years earlier than to Tokyo Teleport Town, so the first stage of the developments was finished when the economic decline started. Nevertheless, the rents in the commercial sector dropped to a half and the vacancy rate of the newly constructed buildings peaked. It was already too late to change the urban layout of the plan in terms of road design and plot sizes, but the actual purposes could still be adapted. However, MM21 did not modify its plans and this is why even today many plots are underdeveloped. The government lowered taxes and offered subsidies in order to attract investors. Compared to Tokyo Teleport Town, it focussed squarely on the cultural aspects and amenities in order to attract large events such as the Cultural Triennial and the hosting of the World Cup in 2002, including the final. This positive atmosphere attracts tourists from Japan and around the world. Notwithstanding these measures, the entire development heavily suffered from the decline of the demand for office space. Rather than leaving the Figure 47. Renovated old warehouses making now the scenery of a Sunday walk.

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Figure 48. Model houses in the shadow of the neighbouring developments.

large plots of planned business zones undeveloped and unused, different kinds of investments were attracted with short leasing contracts of ten years. This cheap renting encouraged temporary building activities, which led to a notable differentiation of amenities in the centre of the development. All sorts of constructions were set up such as car parks, restaurants, car dealer centres, shops and even a set of model houses. These developments are not very profitable for the TMG compared to the expected rent from highrise offices, but they are necessary in order to prevent emptiness, which is detrimental for the image of the neighbourhood and therefore for attracting future investors. Role of the pedestrian axes Tokyo Teleport Town and MM21 were both were structured using the concept of pedestrian axes, but they integrated the axes in completely different ways. While Tokyo Teleport Town did not develop them during the first 20 years, MM21 developed the axes one by one, at the same time as the surrounding developments. Queen’s axis forms an inner street at its intersections with shopping malls, so the interaction between the pedestrian flow and the [63]

Figure 49. Grand Mall axis with facing stores and offices.

shops is guaranteed and coordinated. The three axes cross each other at interesting spots with great views and meeting places. The axes can be seen as the skeleton of the development, not only in the plans, but in also in the actual daily use. The Grand Mall axis is a fully outdoor promenade connecting the centre of the new quarter with Yokohama station and all the buildings along the axis are oriented towards this vibrant walkway. Location in the city Unlike Tokyo Teleport Town, MM21 tried to link the two main neighbourhoods of Yokohama, which were essentially isolated from each other before the MM21 development. MM21 redeveloped the industrial site in between the two neighbourhoods, with a high percentage of public space, but the linkage between the neighbourhoods is generally perceived as rather poor. Nevertheless, the construction of the axes is not yet finished, and recently some important new linkages were established. One of the aims of the project was to create a powerful city image in order to strengthen the independency from Tokyo. MM21 succeeded in broadening the image of the site from an office district only (yet still the main economic motor) towards deploying cultural activities. By redeveloping the area, blue-collar jobs related to the [64]

dockyards were replaced with white-collar jobs. This heavily influenced the adjacent neighbourhoods where the gentrification of the old residential areas started. Old warehouses were demolished and made place for a riverside promenade and new residences, thus softening the imbalance between housing and office space in the original MM21 project.72 Influences by Metabolism? The chief planner of the MM21 project was Masato Otaka, one of the founding members of the Metabolism group, together with Tange known for their radical ideas in the 1960s. Tange and the Metabolism architects were involved in many mega-projects during the 1980s, for example the Convention Centre of Maki, the Tokyo City Hall by Tange and the Osaka Tama New Town by Tange. Tange was also involved in the MM21 project. He created the Yokohama Museum of Art, which opened in 1989. All these interferences in the mega-projects by radical thinkers are perhaps remarkable. Did their progressive and futuristic ideas influence the later developments such as 72 �������������������������������� Hee L., Viray E., Tajudeen I., The Yokohama MM21 model as Post-Industrial Waterfront, 2008, p. 4-5 Figure 50. Queen’s axis crosses the buildings with an indoor street.

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MM21 and Tokyo Teleport Town? And what are the similarities between the 1960s proposals and the more recently developed waterfronts? The megastructures of the 1960s and the mega-projects of the 1980s were both driven by an economic optimism and a belief in new technology. They both faced difficult problems due to a sudden economic change in the respective periods. The post war economic growth in Japan was enormous, especially in Tokyo, where the city expanded and new industrials innovations turned the city into one of the foremost industrial areas in the world. The Metabolism movement was influenced by this growth and proposed their futuristic plans in a climate of economic excitement. The energy crisis of 1973 slowed down the economy drastically and the ideas of the Metabolism architects made place for abstemious realism. The bubble economy and the rapid changes in the information industry, such as the teleport philosophy, created the economic background for the developments in the 1980s. This bubble burst in the early 1990s while many projects were in development, causing stagnation and some of them even to disappear. The aims of the projects of the 1960s and the 1980s have similarities too, since both wanted to make models for ‘ideal places’ or ‘perfect cities’. It seems they both had problems with the urban fabric of the existing city and didn’t see a solution for this, so they started from scratch on the water (Tokyo Bay Plan), on islands (Tokyo Teleport Town), or on derelict industrial zones (MM21). When Tange proposed his Tokyo Bay plan, he talked about the ‘open society’ he would create by executing his vision about the expansion of the city. The framework he created with the linear highway and the A-shaped buildings, where people could construct their own houses, were infrastructural elements he provided to create this ‘better place’.73 The Tokyo Teleport Town strategy provided many public spaces, parks, water access and the newest technology, all with the aim of creating a perfect human environment. One difference between the 1960s and the 1980s was the role of the government. While in Tange’s plan, the public authorities were responsible for the execution of the entire plan, the role of the government changed in the 1980s through the introduction of public-private partnerships. The infrastructure was still provided by the government, but private partners were involved in erecting the buildings on leased grounds. Public authorities changed their role from those who had to produce the city (what Tange had suggested, but which in fact was not possible in Tokyo with the relatively weak TMG in terms of urban planning) to those who promote and regulate 73 �������������������� Kenzo ������������������� Tange Team, “A plan for Tokyo, 1960: Toward a Structural Reorganization”, in Shinkenchikusha, March 1961 [66]

Figure 51, 52, 53. Tokyo Bay Plan, Tokyo Teleport Town and Minato Mirai 21

its production.74 Tange’s central spine served as an organizing axis for the integration of buildings and public spaces. It laid down the spatial architectural framework and guided the progressive, continuous growth of the city. Traffic flows were separated and a transparent hierarchy organized the road system, with pedestrians having their own network. Axes were central in the framework for the 1980s development too, but cars weren’t as central anymore and instead pedestrians were highlighted as the main internal traffic flows. This shift modified the interaction of the axes with the surroundings and the perception of distance. The conventional planning based on two-dimensional zoning was replaced with a three-dimensional system organized around the transportation system. Pedestrian flows were segregated from the cars with pedestrian decks connecting to offices and commercial amenities at higher levels. Multi-level transportation nodes were designed to interchange between transport type.75

74 ����������������� Madanipour A., “�Roles and challenges of urban design”, in Journal of Urban Design, Vol. 11, 2006, p. 173-193 75 ������������� Lin ������������ Z.-J., “From Megastructure to Megalopolis: Formation and Transformation of Megaprojects in Tokyo Bay”, in Journal of Urban Design, Vol.12, 2007, p. 86-87

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Figure 54. Flexible boundary between public and private in an alley of contemporary Tokyo.

Figure 55. Oversized open space in Tokyo Teleport Town.

5. Conclusion Overkill of public space The two projects discussed above are radical different from traditional Japanese ideas about public space. They both integrate Western thinking into their concepts of outdoor public spaces. The Japanese normally gather in peaceful surroundings such as temple grounds and pocket parks or at nodes of flows of people, such as crossroads and small plazas in front of railway stations. During the Edo period, bridges played the most important role as meeting places, but with the shift in transport modes, places around stations took over this role. Western concepts of ‘private’ and ‘public’ did not exist in the original Japanese culture. The Japanese language originally did not have a word for ‘private’ and privacy rights were formally established only in the 1960s. This makes ‘public space’ a very flexible concept. Public space is more defined in terms of temporary events rather than by permanent and physical boundaries. Tenement houses were normal during the Edo period in Tokyo. They were built as compact urban blocks with internal alleys of 1 meter wide. The individual dwellings consisted of a single room, often open to the street. Bathrooms, the well and garbage disposal were organised community-wise [68]

at a central point of the block. Residents had to walk through the alleys to use the facilities and the neighbourhood was seen as their ‘home’, making the border between public and private being constantly redefined by the resident’s activities at any one moment. Parades, organised for special occasions by the community associated with a shrine, pass the streets and surroundings of this shrine. These events occupy an area far larger than the shrine ground itself and creates a temporary large unified public space. This illustrates the event-defined character of the public space, which is very common in Tokyo since the tight supply of land generally does not provide enough room for Western-sized public spaces. To conclude this intermezzo about public space in Japan we can say that the word ‘public’ has more a mental value than a physical connotation. However, this is changing and the Japanese now have the tendency to define physical borders of their property, adopting Western behaviour.76 The integrated public spaces in Tokyo Teleport Town and MM21 break with the traditional customs and use Western-style plazas and promenades to physically define public space, clearly separated from private space. This has resulted in a large share of public space, uncommon in Tokyo and Japan in general. Tokyo is not used to emptiness and the generally perceived low 76 ����������������������� Hidaka T., Tanaka M., Public Places in Asia Pacific Cities. Current Issues and Strategies, Kluwer, 2001, p. 107-118 Figure 56. High-rise towers lined up on the banks of the Sumida river.

Figure 57. Canal at the backside.

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quality of the parks and axes in the Tokyo Teleport Town shows an extreme underuse of this generously available space. It seems something is missing in the concepts of high-rise buildings surrounded by scattered greenery. Interaction with the waterfront? Tokyo evolved from a city on water as the backbone of its economy, social life and public space in the Edo period to an industrial metropolis in the 21st century with its back turned to this once vibrant waterscape. Canals were polluted, drained, superseded by land transport and lost their once prominent public and social role. The banks of the Sumida river and the seashore changed to the backside of an industrialized belt. During the 1980s, the awareness about the potential of waterfront developments rose, following many foreign examples. Projects in Tokyo were set up to take benefit of this costless and abundant natural resource. Due to the economic crisis hitting Japan in the 1990s and the low-quality designs, the city hardly changed its position towards the water and remains physically, culturally and socially disconnected from the waterfront. At best, the projects succeeded to interact and use the water proximity as a source of connection and interaction, but did not re-establish the earlier vibrant relation between the water and city. Minato Mirai 21 in Yokohama provided a park reaching the waterline, but the connection between this public space and the other part of the development or the existing city is missing. This is not a plead for rectilinear designs, but the flows of people, the proximity of the water and the facilities could have been integrated in a better way. Elsewhere in MM21, these amenities are provided close to the coastline, yet they turn their back towards the water, for example Queen’s axis, which is designed as an internal street. In Tokyo Teleport Town, none of the buildings interacts directly with the water. Its only role is to provide splendid views from the high-rise buildings. Other facilities such as the shopping malls neglect the water completely and separate the users from the waterfront by creating an internal artificial scenery. Reconnecting the city with the water will require more effort. The remaining canals in the city should be embedded in a redevelopment strategy too, which is extremely difficult since they are often overarched by elevated highways. The shoreline itself is at some places accessible for the public and during the 1990s, pedestrian walkways were created next to it. These changes were a start, but they are just one step to create a closer proximity to the water. The walkways are often hidden at the back of buildings, and in [70]

Figure 58. Article figuration about the focus on teleport activities in Tokyo Teleport Town.

Figure 59. River City 21 with high-rise apartment towers together with scattered greenery.

new developments such as Minato Mirai 21, they do not interact with urban life or architecture. On the other hand, the temporary uniformly approach towards waterfronts around the world could be drawn in question. Many major cities are located along the water or sea and each of them tries to develop its banks while using this key element to promote the city. Danger exists that in the end all cities will look similar, as bad copies of each other, with waterfront developments as their recurrent merchandising tool. Visiting Barcelona could become similar to visiting Tokyo or London. Landscaped parks along the coast, lined up high-rise buildings with the most expensive apartments of the area and a highlighted promenade with accessibility to the water. The expression ‘waterfront development’ already emphasizes the special meaning of a site and the main goal of the project. Maybe it isn’t opportune to develop every site along the water focussing on this adjacent natural resource. Instead, a strong entity on it’s own could be created, while escaping the predominant development trend. In addition, some parts of the city could be (re)opened towards the water, every time as a discovery, in contradiction to the linear bank developments. A variety of strategies and strong identities for developments along the water, with sometimes an integration of the adjacent water could provide a much more specific identity to the city and it water banks.

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Figure 60. Undeveloped central axes in Tokyo Teleport Town.

Figure 61. Sloppy connection between pedestrian deck and the realised buildings.

Economic pressure results in a unilateral program

Both projects were mainly driven by economic forces, in the hunt for more office space. This trend is ubiquitous in Tokyo with the expanding CBD, driving the city’s inhabitants to the faraway suburbs. Tange discussed all of this in 1987 in his proposals for developments in Tokyo Bay. Instead of integrating large numbers of high-quality residences in the developments, the Tokyo Teleport Town and the MM21 programs was primarily focused on profitable office space. The selection of these programs may perhaps give a distorted view, since there are also examples of housing projects such as River City 21 in Tsukushima, a project that was focussed mainly on residential highrise towers. Tokyo Teleport Town and Minato Mirai 21 suffered extremely hard from of the economic stagnation and oversupply of office space. This resulted in a slack government attitude with regard to implementing building regulations and preventing low-quality architecture. Defective relation with the neighbourhood The projects can be viewed as ‘islands’ in the city. This disconnectedness was a conscious design choice and was even stressed in the communication towards the public with slogans such as ‘creating a new town’ and ‘making a city in the city’. It is remarkable that the new developments wanted to dissociate from the existing city and tried to make stand-alone projects even when located in the existing urban structure. The planners wanted [72]

to realize revolutionary projects, show real solutions for the existing urban mess and integration did not fit into this endeavour. This is a missed chance and worked out counterproductively. Cities, after all, are more resilient to crises thanks to their better-balanced economic, social, political and urban structure than developments such as Tokyo Teleport Town, which were built up from scratch. The slow process of urban planning in an ever faster changing society Contemporaneous urban planning is challenged with ever faster changing societies. The economic situation and social behaviour are constantly shifting, heavily influenced by the information age. The plans of the two projects discussed were based on a structure with rigid predefined goals. Tokyo Teleport Town and Minato Mirai 21 slowed down heavily due to changing economic conditions and the developments were unable to appropriately react because of the inflexibility of the master plans. Tokyo Teleport Town slowed down so heavily that it could not even complete the backbone of its project during the first 20 years. Minato Mirai 21, on the other hand, evolved somewhat differently, with a phased development, ensuring that urban organisation was done at the same time as the buildings were set up. Nevertheless it is hard to conceive this phasing as an always-flexible solution since many land plots remained vacant and underused. Both projects never reached – and may never reach – the outcomes as they were conceived in late 1980s. The planning strategy was similar in both projects, with outcomes specified in great detail and conceived in such a way that the project is satisfactory only when completely finished. Intermediate phases before final completion were, in essence, considered as inferior states. This way of urban planning is now outdated. A new approach is needed for future developments of this size in swiftly changing urban places such as Tokyo. Master plans should become much more adaptable to the evolving needs of the city. The term ‘master plan’ could be dropped because of its predefined connotation. Instead a progressive strategy should be implemented, with essential key points, but with a maximum of flexibility. Final renderings should be avoided and the fixed key points could be reached by different approaches. The focus of this new type of urban planning is at the constant transformation guided by the frame of key elements. This is in contrast with classic institutional urban planning where a specific program, form and outcome are decided in advance and where the intermediate levels are just an incomplete form of the end result. [73]

7. Tsukiji redevelopment

Institutional waterfront development Planning: specific program, form and outcome

Starting from scratch

YEAR 0

slow development

economic change

fixed end result

YEAR 10

no flexibility: pragmatic process

status quo

YEAR 20

demolition

demolition

YEAR 30

Starting from scratch

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YEAR 40

Organic strategy Planning: neutral grid and key point strategy

Starting with existing situation

gradually implementation of grid with a variety of initiatives and forms

transformation

transformation

transformation

The research and conclusions clearly pointed out the dangers of classic waterfront developments in Tokyo. New developments on the Tsukiji site will resolute break with these principles of a fixed master plan. Instead, an organic strategy will be introduced. The classic waterfront developments used an institutional way of urban planning with a clear vision on form, program and final outcome. Their incapable reaction towards changes in society and economy are highlighted and shows the backside of this total planning strategy. They are not necessarily doomed to fail and could reach their final outcome in a short period of time. The subsequent years would be a status quo situation until the entire development gets outdated. At this point, a new master plan would be implemented, starting again from scratch, which means that the established interrelation with the existing city would be abandoned. The organic strategy with key elements and focussing on a dense residential area in the proximity of the CBD is a first step in competing the imbalance of living and working in the centre of the city. A grid of linear public spaces will be implemented, connected to the existing urban fabric. A phased planning is highly important with an optimal use of the site starting from the first day. In the beginning, the majority of the existing buildings will be temporary reused for a variety of functions while the grid and new residential quarters are gradually incorporated. The constant transformation will cause a frequent change of usage of the buildings and grounds. After 40 years, the neighbourhood will be still in transformation, and getting woven in the existing city structure. This never ending process of transformation is only possible with a flexible and liberal plan, managed by the government with a minimum set of rules for the private investors. The next step in the design is the definition of the key elements, the guided phasing and the implementation of this strategy on a level of a building block and how this constant transformation process evolves. [75]

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Image credits

1 Siebert Loren + Tange Associates (own adjustements) 2 http://aboutjapan.japansociety.org (April 2012) 3 Own picture, 2012 4 Utagawa K. 5 Own picture, 2012 6 Own map 7 Keisai E. (http://www.ndl.go.jp/nichiran/e/ s2/s2_4_2_2.html (April 2012)) 8 Unknown source 9 United States Air Force. (http://ww2db. com/image.php?image_id=14310 (April 2012)) 10 http://www.universetoday.com (April 2012) 11 Archigram Archives 12 http://www.concordesst.com/ (April 2012) 13 Life Magazine (own adjustments) 14 Koolhaas R., Obrist H.U. 15 Ibid 16 Ibid 17 Ibid 18 Ibid 19 Ibid. (own adjustments) 20 Tange Associates 21 Smithson P. (Architectural design Maga zine, Vol. 34, 1964) 22 Tokyo Metropolitan Government (own adjustments) 23 Shukan Asahi Magazine. January 1964 24 Playboy, Japanese edition. February 1974 25 Siebert Loren 26 Tange Associates (Japan Architect, Vol. 367/368, 1897) 27 ibid (own adjustments) 28 Own map, own pictures 2012 29 Office of Tokyo Frontier Promotion (own adjustments) 30 Office of Tokyo Frontier Promotion (own adjustments) 31 Own map 32 Own picture, 2012

33 TMG Tokyo Teleport Town 34 Nguyen M. M. (own adjustment) 35 Shelton B. (own adjustment) 36 Office of Tokyo Frontier Promotion (own adjustments) 37 Own picture, 2012 38 Own picture, 2012 39 Own picture, 2012 40 Graham S, Simon M (own adjustments) 41 http://mapbrowse.gsi.go.jp/ airphoto/ (April 2012) and http://maps.google.com (April 2012) 42 Own map 43 Municipal Government of Yokohama 44 Yokohama MM21 Corporation 45 Own picture, 2012 46 Own picture, 2012 47 Own picture, 2012 48 Own picture, 2012 49 Own picture, 2012 50 Own picture, 2012 51 Tange Associates 52 Office of Tokyo Frontier Pro motion (own adjustments) 53 Own map 54 Unknown source 55 Own picture, 2012 56 Own picture, 2012 57 Own picture, 2012 58 CIO 59 http://bing.com/maps (May 2012) 60 http://bing.com/maps (May 2012) 61 Own picture, 2012 62 Tange Associates (own adjustements)

Figure 62. (back). Plan for Tokyo 1960 of Kenzo Tange >>>

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