Changes in the Japanese Urban System Since the 1950s: Urbanization, Demography, and the Management Function

Divided Tokyo: Housing Policy, the Ideology of Homeownership, and the Growing Contrast Between the City Center and the Suburbs

“…Many post-war spatial, urban, and housing regulations established in the 1950s developed the fundamental urban systems and institutional structures of Japan (Abe et al 2018). For instance, a spatial plan based on the Comprehensive National Land Development Act of 1950 determined development measures in Japan.…”

“…The result was that Tokyo emerged as the clear winner, followed by Osaka and Nagoya. This led to the creation of the Tokaido megalopolis and turned other areas into shrinking regions (Abe et al 2018). One example is the change in procedures regarding social housing, which from the 1950 to the 1960s was preferred by young married couples who wanted to save money to buy their own homes in the near future.…”

“…To deal with this problem, the national government passed the Urban Renaissance Special Measure Law in 2002, a neo-liberal spatial policy promoting deregulation in urban planning, land use, and housing supply. Through city center redevelopment, governments expected to overcome the long-term economic recession and stimulate rebuilding projects to increase the number of disaster-proof buildings (Abe et al 2018). This policy strengthened the power of central Tokyo and facilitated recovery in terms of both population and economic activity in the first decade of the twentyfirst century (Koizumi et al 2011;Miyazawa and Abe 2005;Yabe 2003).…”

“…The horizontal expansion of the suburbs and an increasingly car-oriented lifestyle required new development and investment. National policies and public interventions accelerated the building of highways, high-speed railways, and other urban infrastructure in the suburbs (Abe et al 2018). The government relocated some urban functions from central Tokyo to the surrounding suburbs, and public interventions promoted suburban development from the 1970s to the 1990s (Abe et al 2018;Kubo 2017).…”

“…The neo-liberal national policies that stimulated urban renewal through the deregulation of urban planning, building standards, and the housing market (e.g., the Urban Renaissance Special Measure Law of 2002) strongly supported the re-growth of central Tokyo from the beginning of the twenty-first century onward. For instance, the deregulation of the floor-space ratio enabled super high-rise buildings in commercial and industrial areas in central Tokyo, offering bonus floor space to projects providing vacant public spaces that could serve as evacuation sites in natural disasters or other emergencies (Kubo 2014;Abe et al 2018). New-build gentrification, ranging from the development of vacant commercial, industrial, or reclaimed land to super high-rise buildings, has transformed central Tokyo's landscape since the beginning of the twenty-first century (Lutzeler 2008).…”