The Histography of Eco City Tokyo
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Kimiko Nakayama The Histography of Eco City Tokyo A Neoliberal Sustainable Urban City? Master’s thesis in Global Environmental History 2 Abstract Nakayama, K. 2019. The historiography of Eco City Tokyo: A Neoliberal Sustainable Urban City? Uppsala, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History. Trend of Sustainability is applied to city planning and try to achieve the sustainable development of a city and a town that is generous to people, environment and vitalise the economy at the same time. Initiatives for sustainable city planning in Japan is organized by the national Government, so called, FutureCity Initiative. This initiative enables to local city and representative to participate and act for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) within a city and aim sustainable development. Chiyoda city is one of the cities elected as an Eco-Model City’s FutureCity project. One of their approaches is to cooperate with local businesses group in Otemachi, Marunouchi, Yurakucho district (OMY district) to solve the environmental and social issues and contribute for their city to be sustainable. This thesis focuses on this OMY district that support a huge part of Japanese economy and aim to be the world most sustainable urban city to lead a sustainable earth in the future. When business leaders become main actors of sustainable city making, their business and economic knowledge and the interest to sustainability would be combined and influence the definition and understanding of ‘sustainability.’ It is important to acknowledge that the process of meaning making for sustainability, from a business perspective in capitalism and neoliberal society, has been influenced by historical factors that human beings has been prioritising economic growth and ideology of capitalism and affect the environment and vice versa. This also have impact on the structure of Tokyo including infrastructure, transportation, lifestyle, human behaviour in the future. In this circumstance, will it actually make the city sustainable for its environment, society and economy? Keywords: urban sustainability, urban development, urban history, sustainable development Master’s thesis in Global Environmental History (45 credits), supervisor: Anneli Ekblom, Defended and approved spring term 2019-06-05 © Kimiko Nakayama Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Box 626, 75126 Uppsala, Sweden 3 4 Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................7 1.1. Research Aims ............................................................................................................................8 1.2. Structure ......................................................................................................................................8 1.3. Background .................................................................................................................................9 1.3.1. Otemachi, Marunouchi and Yurakucho District of Chiyoda City, TOKYO ....................10 1.3.2. Sustainable Urban Cities ...................................................................................................11 1.3.3. Marketing sustainability ....................................................................................................15 Methodology ........................................................................................................................................16 2.1. Conceptual Frame .....................................................................................................................16 2.1.1. Critical Discourse Studies .................................................................................................17 2.1.2. Environmental History ......................................................................................................17 2.1.3. Power/Knowledge .............................................................................................................18 2.2. Object of Analysis, Ecozzeria...................................................................................................18 2.2.1. What is Ecozzeria? ............................................................................................................19 2.2.2. The process of Analysis ....................................................................................................20 Japanese Environmental History 1603-Today .....................................................................................23 3.1. The general political and social history ....................................................................................24 Agricultural Society to Early Industrialism ................................................................................24 Imperial Industrialism (1890-1945) ............................................................................................24 Post-war Period, Entrepreneurial Industrialism (1945-2010) .....................................................25 3.2. Environmental problems and awareness ..................................................................................26 Environmental policies and awareness .......................................................................................26 Entrepreneurial industry era environmental issues movement ...................................................28 3.3. Urban development and Tokyo City.........................................................................................29 Edo becomes Tokyo ....................................................................................................................30 Enters the idea of the Eco-model city .........................................................................................32 Analysis of the CSV Business Salon....................................................................................................34 4.1. Overall Review .........................................................................................................................34 4.2. Invited speakers and guests ......................................................................................................35 4.2. Environmental Purpose in Sentences........................................................................................37 4.3. People, Community and Society Purposed Sentences ..............................................................39 4.4. Economic and Business Growth in Sustainability ....................................................................40 4.5. Critical opinions and Lack of Concern .....................................................................................41 4.6. Actors, Objects and Approaches in Poplar topics ....................................................................44 Discussion ............................................................................................................................................48 5.1. Is Ecozzeria actually making the city more sustainable? .........................................................48 5.2. Urban Political Economy and Environment .............................................................................50 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................54 References ............................................................................................................................................57 5 6 Introduction Eco-City, Compact-City, Smart-City, these are just many of the names used for cities that aim to be or market themselves as sustainable and ecologically friendly. “Development” and “growth”, at the same time, are popular terms in societies today that are working to improve their citizens lives. However, recent societal trends that encourage neoliberalism have had a negative impact on population demographics, as wealth gaps have become bigger and bigger. Development projects have often resulted in the oppression of the poor population, even as sustainability measures claim to be protecting future populations and non-human beings. Since the discussion on environmental issues started in the 1970s population rise has been considered a problematic factor (Shibata 1979, Doi 2015). This is because the impact of human activities on the environment is often explained in these three causes: population growth rate, per-capita consumption/GDP and technological development (Doi 2014, Totman 2016). Energy consumption accelerates or declines depending on the level of human activities, and urban areas, where human population is centralized, are consuming energy at a non-stop rate, with the cycle of natural resources turned into materials/services and then waste that is left in the ‘nature’ (Doi 2014). United Nations Population Fund (2016, 2017) and the United Nations (2018), have published reports specifying that the population in rural areas has declined or remained static even as the population in urban areas is expected to keep growing and it reach 3 billion by 2050, which is 68 percent of the entire world population. The relationship between urbanization and economic growth is significant because urban cities hold over 80 percent of gross national products in most countries (United Nations Population Fund 2016). At the international level, urbanization has been criticized for its role in the creation of large income gaps between economic