Office Location in the Central Area of Takamatsu

Abstract

Industries and human activities have been highly diversified in Japan as well as in western developed countries in recent years and the employment of clerical and administrative works has been increasing in number. In the central area of metropolises the number of office buildings has increased and it has come to form a district specialized in office activities in its appearance and in its function. Several studies on office establishment patterns and office location change patterns have been done so far and yet there have been few case studies that discussed the patterns in connection with location of office buildings tenanted by offices. Office location studies in smaller cities other than metropolises have been few, either.The purpose of this paper is to show clearly and precisely the expansion of office establishments and office buildings and the patterns in office location change in the central area of Takamatsu. The analysis is based on 50 unit-blocks that show existing street conditions. The target years are: 1964 (1965), 1974 (1975) and 1986 (1987).The results of the analysis are summarized as follows:1) The leading figures in the expansion of office establishments in the central area of Takamatsu are the branch offices whose headquarters locate in Tokyo or in Osaka. These branch offices whose with ample capital occupy the first-class locations where accessibility and office-to-office contacts are easily kept.In all parts of central Takamatsu the number of offices with a smaller number of workers per office has increased remarkably, because service industry has grown rapidly to establish new offices and each office has improved management efficiency by office automation etc.2) Office buildings have been more and more multistoried as a result of the steep rise of land value in the central area of Takamatsu. The state of the use of floor spaces in office buildings differs by regions: in the regions where each office can manage, in each specified business field, such intensive office activities as to compensate expensive rent, floor spaces are occupied by office function only, while in the other regions floor spaces are occupied by various functions.3) The owners of small real estate living in the central area of Takamatsu have started to manage office building business since their rebuilding of the old house or building in order to answer the increasing demand for office spaces and the need to lighten the tax burden rated highly by the steep rise in land value in recent years. However, major real estate companies have also built many buildings and it has resulted in the imbalance between supply and demand and the rented ratio of office spaces in small buildings owned by individuals has been low.4) The research on the change of office location shows that the increase of new offices has had more influence on changes in office location has been strongly affected by establishments of well-equipped, multistoried office buildings-for-rent with enough floor spaces.