LOCATION OF TALL RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF A RESIDENTIAL CITY “ASHIYA”

Abstract

In the big cities of our country, the tendency to make buildings higher started first after World War II in the center of the cities where intense commercial and administrative ac-tivties were carried on. From the latter half of the 1950's this tendency turned to reside-ntial buildings as a result of the adaptation of private and public funds to the change in the family structure and the desire for more efficient dwellings. Ashiya with an area of about 17km2 is located to the south of the eastern part of the Rokko mountain area and is a residential town situated between the big cities of Osaka and Kobe. It has a population of about 75, 000. Ashiya first came to hold the public eye as a residential town after World War I, when the upper-class people who made profits owing to the War could afford residences in the suburbs separating their home from their business. Ashiya is well suited for higher class residences due to its natural environment where the land is well drained. The residential area built up in Ashiya and other similar places such as Kobe and Kyoto before World War II will be called hereafter as a residential city of “Ashiya type”. Its characteristics are as follows: (a) Lots are spacious compared to their proximity to large business districts. (b) A varied topographic environment which includes mountains, hills, streams, and forests are utilized both as backgrounds for and integral parts of private gardens. (c) Dwellers are mainly business proprietors with their offices in neighbouring big cities. (d) The regional structure of the city has a simple pattern consisting of a residential region, small shopping areas around railway stations and the whole is surrounded by rural spaces. (e) Facilities for production, amusement, higher education and medical care are mainly found in the other proximate areas. “Rokurokuso” and the areas along the Ashiya River are typical residential areas of Ashiya-type. Rokurokuso was developed in the early Showa era (1927_??_1935) imitating European settlements in Hong Kong. Since World War II, it has been difficult even in Ashiya to maintain the “Ashiya-type” city owing to war damage which resulted in land ownership suffering severe changes. There, with the progress of reconstruction, multi-family dwellings on small lots started to be built and such areas showed a clear difference with the former residential areas of Ashiya-type. From around 1960, high-rise residences came rapidly to be built in Ashiya. First they were built on the right side of the Miyagawa River to the south of the Hankyu rail line and then in the low and wet coastal area. Then they expanded to the foothills to the north of the Hankyu line and to the natural levees of the Ashiya River. While most of the earlier apartment-type buildings were four-storied, buildings of six stories increas-ed from 1965 and higher residential buildings prevailed in general in Ashiya. By applying a grid of 300m meshes to the map of Ashiya and by calculating the ratio of floor space of buildings with more than three floors in each grid to the area of grid, it is shown (Fig. 4) that the distribution of high-rise buildings is dense in two types of area. One is the former Ashiya-type residential area and the other is the area where the natural land condition is inappropriate for the Ashiya-type residence and the economic efficiency has been pursued through the development with higher residential buildings. The capital used for these high-rise buildings and company dwellings comes from the larger cities of Osaka, Kobe etc. and due to the population pressure of those cities, more than half of the residents of the above-mentioned housings are newcomers to the city of Ashiya. In the area of high-rise residential buildings of Ashiya there are few shopping and amuse-ment facilities.