A GEOGRAPHICAL STUDY ON THE RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT OF YOKOHAMA CITY

Abstract

Problem on the conquest of the inhabited areas (ecumene) is the basic theme assigned to geography. It is highly desirable that geography makes concrete and synthetic investigations into the inhabited areas and also acts the part of social initiator for the development enterprise. Tasks which settle this important focus in a creative manner, through courage and wisdom, by means of perceiving the actuality sensitively and severely, are required of geography that is courageous enough to deal with the relationships between the human being and the earth. In Japan, the life on alluvial lowland which has so far brought up our thought, behavior and even aesthetic sense is moving onto upland, hill-land and piedmont gentle slope, and it is not but a temporary phenomenon. Limit of high-density residential areas on the lowland claims new evaluation of the land. Considering such a situation, the author grasped the reality in the latest residential developments based on the date of public works as economically and quantitatively as possible, and made inquiry into the distribution of urban occupance and residential development areas in Japan. This study also deals with the views of value judgement for the land and the development subjects, and has tried to find a key to the residential location theory. The experimental areas was taken from Yokohama City. Figs. 1 and 2 show the residential developments transforming the regional structure in terms of the relation between the area of residential developments and the removed earth quantity. Figs. 6 and 7 show dense and sparse urban occupances. These investigations are only part of the study on the residential development. However, to get a good grasp of the reality in the residential and land development, it is most necessary for us to grip statistically such a morphological and dynamic phenomenon of land, and also to gain a deep objective insight into them. This phenomenon has an undefined complex dynamism and its speed differs from time to time and from place to place. Getting hold of the land development on each area keenly, considering it in relation to the existing regional structure, finding out its limit and possibility, and looking for values disclosed between human activity and land, and obtaining the modern viewpoint of geography, all these are the roles of geography that systematize them. There is no other means than geography to grasp, with exactitude, the process of combining human activity with land in the regional structure.