URBAN DENSIFICATION OF TOKYO CITY

ARP 561 URBANSIM

INSTRUCTOR: DINA BAROUD
FALL 2020
ASSIGNMENT II PRESENTED BY
NAJLAA RESLAN
ID# 20168103
THEME 9: URBAN DENSIFICATION PROS & CONS OF
TOKYO CITY

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CONTENT

BACKGROUND: URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND TOKYO CITY

URBAN DENSIFICATION: PROS & CONS

 HIGH RISE BUILDINGS EFFECTS ON DENSITY
 TRANSPORTATION EFFECTS ON HIGH DENSITY

CONCLUSION

KEYWORDS:
URBAN DEVELOPMENT, URBAN HISTORY, URBAN DESIGN, DENSIFICATION, LOW-
RISE AND HIGH-DENSITY, HIGH-RISE AND HIGH DENSITY, TRANSPORTATION

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BACKGROUND: Urban development and

Tokyo City
The origins of Tokyo go back c. 400 years to the Edo period. Since Bakufu was a feudal system,
the planning of Japanese society was top-down. As Ichikawa (1994) writes “The process of the
shaping of urban form can be directly related to the nature of feudalism” 30 (Ichikawa
1994:182). When Edo Bakufu, the feudal military government, came into power, their plan was
to establish a city around Edo Castle and its surrounding environment through a formal city plan.
The plan was to make the land available for commercial buildings and dwellings. This urban
planning based on political and economic needs has influenced also today’s urban structure of
Tokyo, where the ‘castle’ has been replaced by the economic centre (Ichikawa 1994:180).
Edo becomes Tokyo in 1896 imperial rule was re-established in Japan with broke the power of
the Shogun, who was ruling Japan at that time. This event is called the Meiji restoration. As a
result, Edo was renamed Tokyo and made the capital of Japan. Toward the end of the nineteenth
century, Japanese urban planning has changed almost 180 degrees due to Industrial Revolution
from western society influencing the traditional planning principles and design methods. At the
early 20th century, many residents migrated to the Tokyo area due to the need for factory
workers in the urban area. Not only did the population grow, but transportation also blossomed.
(See figures: 5,6). This provoked more urbanization, especially reflecting the steep mountainous
geography of Japan, making the port of Tokyo very valuable for transport.
The great earthquake of 1923 hit down the centre of Tokyo and destroyed buildings, 300,000
homes and 140,000 people were killed in 1923 (Metropolitan Tokyo, Braiterman 2009, Shea
2019). While buildings for transport and water was eventually built up, the Second World War
tragedy interrupted the earthquake. Figure (1-2)
In the Meiji period and the new era, modernization in Tokyo took place quickly The Baroque
planning of the West Town was supported on the base of the Paris model, Where the city square
becomes a central square with an impressive statue (Okamura 2013). However, with this
accelerated urbanization such compact urban planning was inevitable, since the only solution to
accommodate the finite space of the increasingly increasing population was to densely densify
urban areas. The biggest peak of expansion was in the beginning of 1970.

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Figure 1- Tokyo and Yokohama Figure 2- Area around Sumida River

area after the Great Kanto in Tokyo after the fire bombs
Earthquake. Image from The during 1945. Image from The Japan
Atlantic8 Times.9

Urban densification: PROS & CONS

According to Radovic (2012), Tokyo's urban spaces have
historically had a low-rise and high-density spatiality. While high-
rise and high-density urban developments represented by
residential towers are taking over, Tokyo still maintains its largely
low-rise, high-density spatiality. Tokyo is composed of small land
units; he averages plot area of a single property in Tokyo is 218
square meters (Tokyo Metropolitan Government, 2016). At
morphological level, Tokyo is a dense assemblage of those small
units.
It was in the period of 1880s to the 1900s that the city of Tokyo
experienced the most growth in terms of population increase and
the city’s geographic expansion. At that time, the city merged with
the surroundings areas to form the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. On
the good side, this merging of the areas is one of the major events
that influenced the growth of the city.
Figure3

The complicated relationship with density can also be seen from the demand side; because units
on higher floors have better views and more prestige, they also seem to have a higher price than
almost equivalent units on the bottom. (Figure3). And here in the bad side, affecting the real
estate in Tokyo that become one of the most expensive in the world. High prices of real property
are due to limited land combined with high demand due to high population density.

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Tokyo is increasingly evolving, and thus the dense, low-rise urban fabric is being replaced by
high-density developments. (figure3). A 2019 meta-analysis of 180 reports on a wide variety of
urban density economic results found that urban density has net favorable effects but had some
regressive distributional effects, such as the negative impact on low-income residents. According
to Tokyo Metropolitan Government (2019) statistics, between 2008 and 2015, the number of
buildings in Tokyo increased by 38,218 for residential buildings, but decreased for all other types
of buildings. Which has led to unemployment that also makes the problem worse. Though there
are numerous companies, it has become harder and harder to get a job. Three million people are
unemployed in the city. see figure:5

Figure 4

Figure 5

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disadvantageous circumstance, according to the research conducted by the Building Research

Institute of the Japanese Ministry of Construction, high-rise apartment buildings are
‘psychologically problematic’ (Watanabe, 1989). The reasons are: according to Watanabe
(1989), these residents are not conscious of changes in outside brightness, they do not hear the
sound of rain, they miss out on outside activities or the activity of pedestrians, they cannot see
flowers and plants, in stark contrast to the residents of detached houses. For residents of high-rise
buildings, the amount of external stimulation is extraordinarily low, since the ground floor is not
just physically but also psychologically distant. All that makes the residents of those
neighborhoods psychologically and socially distant from each other. (Figure-6)

(a) Water front area of Tokyo (Source: yano@mama.akari.ne.japan1); (b) Large open spaces without social interaction (Source: Thirteen-fri2); (c) High-rise interior space without
external social interaction (Source: edvaldocostacordeiro3)

Figure6

Advantageously, By the time the automobile began to rise in Japan in the mid-1960s, Tokyo's
dense rail network and rail network began to expand. the station area communities have already
been well established. High quality, regular rail service to dense, mixed-use, secure, pedestrian-
friendly communities Enabled Tokyo to achieve enviable rates of public transit use and granted
Tokyo's right to consider automobile owning as a lifestyle option rather than a necessity. Tokyo
continues to connect more lines to an increasingly dizzying patchwork of high-capacity transit —
deciphering a Tokyo Metro Map takes practice. See figures 7,8. And now, Subways are so dense
in Shiodome station and Shimbashi station essentially meld into one, connected by multilevel
pedestrian streets lined with restaurants and stores, an image hinting at the scale of urbanism
Tokyo offers. But, the first issue that stricken me regarding Tokyo is its transportation system
that was so efficient, since the city has planned world class pedestrian infrastructure with sound
walls, frequent storefronts, and a lot of place making. Plus, on the good side, in places where
pedestrians do act with cars, motorists follow accumulation, the law and human decency and
yield to pedestrians. Which is great, but on the other hand Tokyo’s roadways, pedestrian lanes,
and other public spaces experience daily overcrowding as people flock to the area during peak

Figure 7- Tokyo Metro map through history. (Map by Hisagi, used via Wikipedia Commons)
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hours. And from this Traffic Congestion, we can reach many other disadvantageous such as
Higher Crime Rates and the Noise/Air Pollution.

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88

Figure 8

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CONCLUSION
In conclusion, adopting the approach of continually bringing the city’s strong points into play
and solving problems is what Tokyo requires going forward. From there on I think we should be
able to gain a clearer view of what an “edgy Tokyo” may look like in the future.

REFERENCES:

John Calimente (Spring 2012)- Rail integrated communities in Tokyo

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/26201682.pdf?refreqid=excelsior
%3A1d5608ccf9c1f6bdf67d74d62d8a59b7

Satoshi Sano, Ivan Filipović, Darko Radović (2020)-The Journal of Public

Space (2020 | Vol. 5 n 2)-Public-private interaction in low-rise, high-density
Tokyo
https://www.journalpublicspace.org

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https://www.journalpublicspace.org/index.php/jps/article/view/1285/780

Kimiko Nakayama- The Histography of Eco City Tokyo BY Kimiko Nakayama

https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1328993/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Michael Hebbert- Urban Sprawl and Urban Planning iN Japan

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40112285

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