André Sorensen

Conflict, consensus or consent: implications of Japanese land readjustment practice for developing countries

Abstract This paper is relevant to the international effort to transfer an urban land development technique, land readjustment (LR), to several developing countries in South East Asia. The paper examines the model of the Japanese LR method presented by Japanese scholars and development experts to the international audience, and argues that in the context of attempts by several developing countries to adopt the method, there are several crucial shortcomings of the description of Japanese LR in the existing literature. Most important is that the history of opposition to LR in Japan is virtually ignored, and there is very little mention of the enormous commitments of local planning resources necessary to organise consent to projects. These issues are important for an understanding of the use of LR in Japan, and may also have implications for those attempting to make use of LR techniques in other countries. The paper briefly outlines the LR method and the project to export the method to South East Asia, examines the existing literature, and draws on case studies of project organising in three suburban cities in the Tokyo area.

Land Readjustment, Urban Planning and Urban Sprawl in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area

This paper examines the role of land readjustment (LR) projects in suburban planning and land development in a case-study area in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. LR projects have been the most important planning tool in Japan, yet the results of their use to develop over 30 per cent of Japanese urban areas have been little examined. The paper challenges the conventional wisdom that LR projects are an effective means of preventing urban sprawl. Through interviews with local planners and participants in projects, and a detailed GIS mapping of land-use change and infrastructure development in the case-study area, the research presents an in-depth study of the use of LR for suburban land development, and a close look at the patterns of urbanisation on the fringe of Japans most dynamic metropolitan region. It appears that while LR projects do clearly prevent sprawl within the project areas themselves, they tend to exacerbate problems of sprawl at the scale of the city and region.

Taking path dependence seriously: an historical institutionalist research agenda in planning history

This paper outlines an historical institutionalist (HI) research agenda for planning history. HI approaches to the understanding of institutions, path dependence, positive feedback effects in public policy, and patterned processes of institutional change offer a robust theoretical framework and a valuable set of conceptual and analytic tools for the analysis of continuity and change in public policy. Yet, to date, there has been no systematic effort to incorporate historical institutionalism into planning history research. The body of the paper proposes planning history relevant definitions of institutions, path dependence, critical junctures, and incremental change processes, outlines recent HI literature applying and extending these concepts, and frames a number of research questions for planning history that these approaches suggest. A concluding section explores the potential application and leverage of HI approaches to the study of planning history and international comparative planning studies and outlines a research agenda.

Subcentres and Satellite Cities: Tokyo's 20th Century Experience of Planned Polycentrism

This paper examines the role of subcentres and satellite cities in the patterns of growth of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, first outlining the development of metropolitan planning ideas for the Tokyo region from the 1920s to the 1990s, and then examining empirical evidence on patterns of population and employment change that occurred from 1970 to 1995 to determine the degree to which a polycentric pattern of growth has emerged. Japanese planners initially adopted European greenbelt/satellite city schemes uncritically, and then gradually adapted them to circumstances in Japan, eliminating the greenbelt concept along the way. Metropolitan plans have since the 1970s instead proposed the development of a multi-polar metropolitan region as a way of reducing travel needs and distances while eliminating the need to prevent development in intervening areas. The data on patterns of change of population and employment suggests that there has indeed been a considerable tendency towards polycentric development in the Tokyo region, although not only in the planned subcentres, and even though the core area has maintained or increased its dominance as an employment centre. The implications of these findings are then explored.

Building world city Tokyo: Globalization and conflict over urban space

Japanese policy makers have, since their contact with the colonial powers in the mid 19th century, been acutely aware of the pressures and challenges of national survival in a globalizing world. In this sense, the Japanese experience of modernity has been deeply intertwined with, and is in important ways inseparable from the ongoing processes of globalization during the last century and a half. While their main response was to foster the growth of Japanese industrial, military and diplomatic power, one consistent theme has been the development of the capital city Tokyo as emblem of Japan as a civilized nation, location of national institutions, and center of economic power. This project, however, has long been an arena of considerable conflict between city builders and the residents of central Tokyo. The most recent conflict over the control of urban space in Japans premier world city emerged in the last few years when major developers lobbied successfully for massive increases in allowable building volumes and heights in special regeneration areas, arguing that without further deregulation Tokyo would lose its competitive position in relation to Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. This paper argues that in Japan an important feature of globalization and international competitive pressures has been their use by urban actors in disputes over the control of urban space, and examines this use of globalization debates in the competition between economic space and life space in Tokyo.

Urban Renaissance as Intensification: Building Regulation and the Rescaling of Place Governance in Tokyo’s High-rise Manshon Boom

During the past decade, Tokyo has seen a massive building boom, despite a prolonged economic slump since 1990. Since the 1980s, central government has enacted a steady stream of building code changes that allow much larger buildings. This paper argues that the recent wave of private investment in high-rise intensification has been instigated by these changes to building regulations, so that the form of urban restructuring and the distribution of winners and losers in the process are shaped by the central state, a reverse of the previous trend of decentralisation of planning powers. This restructuring of central/ local government relations can be understood as a creative rescaling of governance power that disrupted established democratic institutional frameworks of decision-making and conflict resolution. This study highlights both the centrality of land assets in Japan’s developmental capitalism and the continuing importance of the distinctive institutional legacies of the developmental state in structuring Japanese urban governance.

From Participation to the Right to the City: Democratic Place Management at the Neighbourhood Scale in Comparative Perspective

Abstract Public participation processes have become increasingly important as a means of structuring the relationship between states and citizens in managing processes of urban change, but continue to fall short of achieving significant democratization of urban governance. Through an examination of three bottom-up processes of citizen engagement in managing urban change at the scale of urban neighbourhoods—Bellavista in Santiago, Chile, Yanaka in Tokyo, Japan, and the Annex in Toronto, Canada—we find that when there exists strong, durable organizations with expertise, institutional memory, and neighbourhood self-governance capacity, such organizations are able to generate a powerful claim to the right to the city through their engagement in processes of urban change. We suggest that the right to the city is at its core a claim to a collective right to democratic engagement in the governance of particular spaces in the city, which gains power and legitimacy through inclusive deliberation and successful interventions, and that the neighbourhood scale provides a special resonance to these claims.

Compact, concurrent, and contiguous: smart growth and 50 years of residential planning in the Toronto region

In this article, we use parcel-based land-use data to analyze 50 years of residential development in the Toronto region. We test two hypotheses: (1) Toronto’s form does not conform to conventional definitions of suburban sprawl and (2) Toronto’s suburban development shows high levels of continuity over time with relatively high densities and mixed housing types. Contrary to recent research suggesting a convergence of urban forms among North American metropolitan regions, Ontario’s robust planning system has created a distinctive, highly consistent pattern of residential development that has, for half a century, achieved many of the core goals of smart growth including relatively compact, contiguous, and concurrent development. This form continues to be automobile dependent, however, and is not producing many of the benefits ascribed to smart growth. Rather than continuing to adopt United States-inspired smart growth policies, a more ambitious set of initiatives will be required to address current regional challenges.

Liveable Cities in Japan: Population Ageing and Decline as Vectors of Change

The challenge of creating liveable cities is emerging as a major policy priority around the world. Globalization, the emerging network society, increasing mobility, and the environmental, economic, health and social imperatives to create more sustainable and liveable cities have combined to increase pressures, primarily on local governments and actors to reinvigorate urban governance, urban planning and urban design. One essential aspect of this project is the improvement and vitalization of urban spaces. In this regard, Japan has significant challenges, stemming from its distinctive history of urban space management, its low proportion of public space in cities, and its aging and imminently shrinking population. At the same time, however, Japan has important opportunities and strengths stemming from its legacies of urban built form, the exceptional vigour of its place-based communities, and its rapidly aging and imminently shrinking population. This paper explores some of the opportunities and challenges facing attempts to build more liveable cities in Japan.

Land, property rights, and planning in Japan: institutional design and institutional change in land management

Although clearly a key institutional framework that structures planning systems, there has been remarkably little attention by planning historians to the comparative study of institutions of property rights in land as a factor shaping approaches to urban planning. Conversely, planning has clearly functioned as a key site of institutional innovation shaping the evolution of property rights. This relationship between planning and property rights deserves greater attention. Although property rights are often entrenched in written constitutions as is the case in both Japan and the USA, and do exhibit considerable continuity over time, they are in fact seldom static, being subject to evolving interpretations and constraints. This paper employs a historical institutionalist approach in the examination of the evolution of institutions of property rights in Japan during the modern period, from just before the Meiji Revolution of 1867–1868 to the early twenty‐first century. The paper shows that the strong protection of landed property rights in Japan is a product of the Meiji period, not the post‐Second World War occupation, and argues that institutional choices in framing landed property rights have multiple and varied long‐term impacts that may have little to do with the original policy goals.