THE REGIONAL STRUCTURE OF SURROUNDING AREAS OF TOKYO

Abstract

The surroudings of Tokyo have undergone a remarkable change in their regional structure in the postwar period. The present paper deals with the results of the latest investigation made by our Regional Structure Research Group. Our purpose was to analyze the regional structure of the area including cities, towns and villages within the radius of 40km around Tokyo Central Station. (23 Wards constituting the Metropolis were excluded from the present investigation.) The uniqueness of the present analysis may be found in its statistical methods; we selected 16 indices which are expected to represent the regional structure of this area: area, population, time-distance, the ratio of commuting, the ratio of revenue, the ratio of employees, the ratio of industrial production, the ratio of per capita selling, the ratio of cultivated land, the ratio of increase in population, the ratio of primary industrial population, the ratio of Factor Analysis secondary industrial population, the ratio of tertiary industrial population, the ratio of managers and officers, the ratio of workers and the ratio of telephone subscribers. The original figures were standardized after logarithmic transformation and a statistical method called Multiple Factor Analysis was applied to them using an electronic calculator. The calculated values were projected upon the area and each factor was designated according to the above table obtained in the process of calculation. The results can be summarized as follows: the regional structure of this area is composed of three factors, namely, Urbanization, Residentilization, Industrialization and when they are projected, it is found that Urbanization is decreasingly sloping centrifugally while both Residentialization and Industrialization appear merely scattering around in the form of “detached estates.” A distinction can be made between ‘higher order district’ comprising the western, eastern, southern and northern suburbs, and, lower order district' comprising Tamagawa valley, Arakawa valley, Tonegawa valley and Boso district. It will be noticed that the western suburbs are the most highly developed area and that Boso district possesses quite an independent regional structure which differs much from the rest of the surroundings. We expect the present method of analysis to be the first of its kind in this country and we hope this will be a stepping-stone to further research in the field of regional structure anayliss.