Land Readjustment and Metropolitan Growth: an Examination of Suburban Land Development and Urban Sprawl in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area
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Progress in Planning 53 (2000) 217±330 www.elsevier.com/locate/pplann Land readjustment and metropolitan growth: an examination of suburban land development and urban sprawl in the Tokyo metropolitan area Andre Sorensen Department of Urban Engineering, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan Abstract Land Readjustment (LR) is a land development technique used in many countries around the world including Germany, Sweden, Japan, Taiwan and Korea. In essence it is a method whereby an irregular pattern of agricultural land holdings is re-arranged into regular building plots and equipped with basic urban infrastructure such as roads and drains. A percentage of each landowner's holding is contributed to provide land for roads and parks, and for some plots to sell to pay the costs of the project. Its use has been particularly widespread in Japan where it is responsible for some 30% of the existing urban area, and is commonly referred to as `The Mother of City Planning' (Toshi Keikaku no Haha ). LR has for 20 years also been the focus of an international eort to introduce the technique to the developing countries of South East Asia. Although there is now a large literature on Japanese LR as a result of that project, however, virtually all of that literature focusses on practical aspects of how to implement projects, and on case studies of individual projects. Little attention has been paid to the role of LR in Japanese urban growth and urban planning at a city or regional scale, although such an examination is necessary to understanding LR in Japan, and Japanese urbanisation and urban planning more generally. The present research examines the role of LR in shaping patterns of urban development in the rapidly growing northern suburbs of Tokyo in Saitama prefecture. In particular, the claim commonly made by Japanese writers that LR prevents urban sprawl is examined. Sprawl and its prevention have long been a preoccupation of both Western and Japanese urban planners for aesthetic and eciency reasons. However, it has recently E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Sorensen) 0305-9006/00/$ - see front matter # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0305-9006(00)00002-7 218 A. Sorensen / Progress in Planning 53 (2000) 217±330 gained importance as the critical interconnections between urban form and urban travel patterns, and greenhouse gas emissions and global warming have become more widely recognised. The case studies examine the role of LR in land development and urban growth at the regional scale (Saitama prefecture) and at the local scale (Urawa, Omiya and Ageo cities). GIS mapping and analysis of the case study areas, and interviews with planners and participants are used to examine the role and impacts of LR projects in suburban land development in Japan. The research suggests that while there are various impacts of LR projects because they are so widely used, in a range of dierent contexts, it is fair to say that LR projects contribute to increased sprawl at the regional scale, while largely failing to prevent it at the local scale. # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. A. Sorensen / Progress in Planning 53 (2000) 217±330 219 INTRODUCTION One thing that strikes many Western visitors to Japan as extraordinary is the extreme sense of disorder of many Japanese cities. The high degree of intermixture of seemingly incompatible land uses, streets which are irregularly laid out and often lack sidewalks, the fantastically dense wirescape overhead, and the jumble of dierent styles, shapes and orientations of buildings all make for a confusing urban environment. Many visitors and even long-term residents from the west ®nd it hard to believe that there is such a thing as urban planning in Japan at all, and are incredulous when told that in fact there is a highly developed urban planning system, with vast resources being put into urban planning and infrastructure development. Nowhere are these contradictions more evident than on the urban fringe. It is here in the half urban, half agricultural districts, criss-crossed by high voltage transmission lines and scattered with high rise apartment blocks fronting on rice ®elds, scrap metal dealers, small clusters of single family houses, ®elds of vegetables and fruit trees, busy factories and truck depots, that the costs of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation are particularly evident. It is indeed hard to credit a sophisticated planning system with the patchwork road system which is here a maze of narrow winding lanes and there an orderly grid of broad streets, and where for no apparent reason a busy two lane arterial road broadens to a four or six lane boulevard for a few hundred meters and then narrows again. It is in these same areas on the fringes of the great metropolitan areas that city planners have worked hardest to carry out Land Readjustment (LR) projects, and where indeed they have been most widely used. This study examines the role of LR in the urbanisation process in Japan. LR is a method whereby a group of landowners can join forces to develop or redevelop land. In essence, LR is a process whereby ownership of scattered and irregular plots of agricultural land is pooled, roads and main infrastructure are built, and the land is then subdivided into urban plots. Each landowner must contribute a portion of their previous land holding (usually about 30% of the total) to provide space for roads, parks and other public space, and for reserve land. The reserve land is sold at the end of the project to pay the costs of planning, administration and construction. The attractiveness of the method for landowners is based on the fact that substantial increases in the value of land can be achieved by the process, so that the value of the individual land holdings can be greatly increased, even though the remaining area is smaller. The attraction for planning authorities is that projects provide land for public facilities, and build needed urban infrastructure. There are two main reasons for wishing to understand Land Readjustment as used in Japan. The ®rst is that Japan is an important case for the study of urbanisation and urban planning, especially in Asia, which is currently one of the most rapidly urbanising regions in the world. Japan is a country which 220 A. Sorensen / Progress in Planning 53 (2000) 217±330 experienced rapid urbanisation and industrialisation during a relatively short period after WW2. It is both the ®rst Asian country to complete an industrial revolution, and a much analysed economic success story. Japan is now the second largest economy in the world with 15% of world GNP, with similar levels of wealth and urbanisation as the developed western countries, yet with a vastly dierent tradition of land use, ownership and planning. Japan also shares a heritage of rice-ased agriculture and land tenure patterns with many other Asian countries. As Ginsberg (1991) has argued, the land ownership structure of rice agriculture areas can have profound eects on patterns of urbanisation. In this respect, Japan may be closer in its basic conditions to some of the rapidly urbanising countries of Asia, which also have rural land holding and settlement patterns structured by rice agriculture, than to western countries. Since Japan is also two or three decades ahead of most of the developing countries of Asia, a better understanding of the Japanese case may be of special interest to planners in those countries, and more generally to those interested in comparative urbanisation and urban planning study. LR has long been a key part of the Japanese urban planning system, about 30% of the current urban area having been developed with LR projects. To understand urbanisation and urban planning in Japan, it is absolutely necessary to understand the role of LR. However, despite considerable interest in the Japanese urban planning system and techniques since the middle 1980s (e.g. Alden, 1986; Hebbert, 1986, 1989, 1994; OECD, 1986; Hebbert and Nakai, 1988a, 1988b; Shapira and Masser, 1994; Golany and Hanaki, 1998), there has been no detailed examination of the eects of the widespread use of LR for land development in Japan. Therefore, it is hoped that the current study will prove a useful contribution to the study of Japanese urban planning. The second factor that gives relevance to the current study is that LR has been the subject of substantial international interest as a possible land development technique for developing countries. In part because of Japan's extensive experience with LR and also because of the enthusiastic response of many Japanese to the opportunity to share their expertise, Japanese experts, with substantial government backing, have played a central role in the resulting technology transfer project designed to enable other countries to make use of the LR method. One visible outcome has been a series of nine international conferences designed to examine and aid the introduction of LR to developing countries, and a substantial literature in English has accumulated (Sorensen, 2000). However, apparently as a result of the fact that the literature is focussed on the transfer of the LR technique, existing case studies have focussed on projects themselves. Apart from frequently cited statistics on the large areas of LR in Japan, and the ubiquitous assertion that ``Land Readjustment is the mother of Japanese urban planning,'' there has been no detailed examination of the role of LR projects in Japanese urban development. Thus, while questions of how to design and carry out projects have been extensively examined, there has been little examination of the overall eects of the use of LR in Japan. More surprising, A. Sorensen / Progress in Planning 53 (2000) 217±330 221 there has also been almost no research of this sort published in Japan.1 It appears that in Japan, LR projects are so common, and their direct public and private bene®ts are seen to be so self-evident, that they have ceased to attract very much academic attention, and the main focus of study is how to ensure that they are applied more widely.